Charter Cable Capping Usage Nationwide This Month

An anonymous reader writes with this snippet from DSL Reports, with possible bad news for Charter customers who live outside the test areas for the bandwidth caps the company's been playing with: "Yesterday we cited an anonymous insider at Charter who informed us that the company would very soon be implementing new caps. Today, Charter's Eric Ketzer confirmed the plans, and informed us that Charter's new, $140 60Mbps tier will not have any limitations. Speeds of 15Mbps or slower will have a 100GB monthly cap, while 15-25Mbps speeds will have a 250GB monthly cap. 'In order to continue providing the best possible experience for our Internet customers, later this month we will be updating our Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) to establish monthly residential bandwidth consumption thresholds,' Ketzer confirms. 'More than 99% of our customers will not be affected by our updated policy, as they consume far less bandwidth than the threshold allows,' he says." But if they're lucky, customers will be able to hit that cap quickly.

Comments

Last sentence is stupid

[YesIAmAScript]

The top paragraph points out that the 60mb service has no cap.

Re:Last sentence is stupid

[XanC]

I believe his point was that Allen may sell the company, and then all bets are off.

Re:Last sentence is stupid

[Sun.Jedi]

Hit the cap and pay double/month for the 60mb service without caps instead of the capped 25mb service. I agree the OP is inferring that Allen may just stay if that happens.

I have charter's 16/2 and was considering moving to fios for the 20mb+ packages offered. I also wanted to dump Charter copper phone, and go voip over fios to help defray total package costs (tv, phone, internet) with a better down/up speed.

Re:Last sentence is stupid

[hemp]

The top paragraph points out that the 60mb service has no cap.

For now.

Re:Last sentence is stupid

[Sta7ic]

It started as "RTFA".
Then it became "RTFS".
Now it's "The Editor Should RTFS".
Sheesh.

Re:Last sentence is stupid

[commodore64_love]

>>>hit the cap and pay double/month for the 60mb service without caps instead of the capped 25mb service

Precisely. If you want the "goods" then you should pay the piper. That's entirely fair. It's how everything from water usage to electric usage to gasoline usage works. The more you use, the more you pay. ----- As for myself, I'd be happy with a 100 Meg cap, since my traffic report says I only downloaded 55 Meg last month. Nowhere near the limit.

Re:Last sentence is stupid

[SydShamino]

Absolutely - - - - as long as they stop advertising all plans below 60mbs as "unlimited".

That's been the problem the previous times bandwidth has been brought up. It's not that caps are bad per se, it's that advertising "unlimited" then implementing a (often hidden) cap is fraud.

And of course, another complication is the fact that last-mile competition is stifled by private ownership of the wire, which together with an undue burden on residents for unlimited fiber pulls, creates a very high barrier to entry for new companies willing to offer truly unlimited service and take market share from the entrenched (literally, in this case) competitors.

Re:Last sentence is stupid

[edmicman]

But you're paying for water usage and electric usage for a finite resource, not the means of transmission. All Charter or any other ISP is providing me is a means to access a resource. I'm paying my water company for the water I use, not the pipes that it comes in on. If I wanted, I could contract with Koolaid to put a reservoir on my land where my water comes in, and I would pay them to provide Koolaid instead of water. Would I keep paying the water company?

Bandwidth caps are stupid stupid stupid, as are the retarded attempts to defend them. This is a situation where the ISPs *don't* want to build new infrastructure and lower their margins, so they are attempting to socially engineer lower bandwidth consumption. If you're running out of space on your pipes, build bigger and more pipes. Don't try and coerce people to use *less* of your service.

WTF would Charter do if all of a sudden every single subscriber signed up for the 60Meg tier and maxed out their bandwidth 24/7. They'd be back in the same fucking boat they're in now.

Re:Last sentence is stupid

[Ironica]

But you're paying for water usage and electric usage for a finite resource, not the means of transmission. All Charter or any other ISP is providing me is a means to access a resource. I'm paying my water company for the water I use, not the pipes that it comes in on.

Your ISP has differential costs based on whether there is data flowing along their "pipes" or not, just as the water company has differential costs based on whether there is water flowing. While the nature of the metered item is different (water being a tangible resource, and data being somewhat abstract), the scaling of costs with consumption is very similar.

Re:Last sentence is stupid

[cayenne8]

"Hit the cap and pay double/month for the 60mb service without caps instead of the capped 25mb service. I agree the OP is inferring that Allen may just stay if that happens.

I have charter's 16/2 and was considering moving to fios for the 20mb+ packages offered. I also wanted to dump Charter copper phone, and go voip over fios to help defray total package costs (tv, phone, internet) with a better down/up speed."

Does Charter offer a 'business' account? If so, get those....if they're like Cox, they aren't that much more than a consumer connection, no caps, no blocked ports, you can run servers all you wish, etc.

And do you have a cell phone? If so...why bother with any type of landline? Just use the cell as your regular phone, save the landline fees. And with a business cable internet connection....enjoy all the internet you wish. Heck..maybe even make a little money OFF having it with a server or two hosting stuff for people.

And...with these connections...they can't really usually put a trap on the line..so, you can also get analog tv signals off them, and with something like a HDHomerun, you can scan the for the un-encrypted digital/hd stations. I mean, if you run this into a mythtv box...you are merely hooking another computer into your computer cable connection, nothing wrong with that, eh?

Talk about saving money.....

Re:Last sentence is stupid

[Naturalis Philosopho]

Then ISPs need to sell bits delivered and sent, not "access". If I knew exactly how much it would cost to send and how much to receive data, be given a metering tool, and have my cost structure built accordingly, then I'd be ok with it. But right now I pay for "access", period. I want the access that I pay for or I want ISPs to be honest and sell a metered service with metered, flexible pricing. I pay about $4 a month in the summer for gas, just to have the pipes hooked up. My bill goes way up in the winter when I use the gas. If the ISPs are all concerned about usage, then meter me so that I can pay $1 to keep the "lights" on when I work all month and don't use any access at home, and charge me per bit for the months when it's slow and I'm sitting around at home downloading movies from iTunes. Right now ISPs want the best of both worlds... for themselves.

Re:Last sentence is stupid

[fermion]

When I was young and poor, I kept my electricity use very low. Why? Because there was one rate for low users, and another for high users. The amount of electricity I could use was unlimited, if I wanted to pay for it. By not crossing that limit, I kept my bill absurdly low.

Of course people today are used to using unlimited service, even me. But there is always a limit, as no resource is infinite. The question usually is do we have to enforce that limit explicitly, or will the market tend to enforce it. For instance, in garbage collection I grew up with unlimited garbage collection. There were practical limits on what could be collected, and I suppose that sometime garbage would not be collected, and i would not call that fraud, but for the most part it worked rather well. But eventually people got lazy, greedy, and wasteful, and a formal limit had to be set. For most of us the limit was not a problem, and we were happy that the parasites who leeched off our taxes were contained.

I think that is what is going on here. I do not think that what amounts to a 142 MB limit per hour of every day is anything that most people would consider a limit. I do not think most services actually effectively feed more than 2 or 3 MB per minute, and least not every minute of day all year. I think that most people would be happy to know that cost are being contained so they are not forced to forced for some other persons p0rm habit. I think it would be more fraudulent to raise rates just to insure other people can run a cheap P2p service, not matter how noble such a service might be.

I also understand that many would say this is just anticompetitive behavior to prevent streaming TV and movies which are becoming more popular. To this I would say, how much tv do you watch? If you are talkiing about downloading extremely good quality movies, at 1 GB a piece, yes, that will eat up the limit, but if you are doing that I would think you would spring for the high speed unlimited service. Otherwise the stuff coming off, say netflix, seems pretty small and one would have to watch a hell of lot of TV to reach that limit. Again, i would not want to subsidize such use. On regular TV, the more you watch the more ads you see. On the web this is not the case.

Re:Last sentence is stupid

[bws111]

In most cases you are NOT paying for the finite resource of water, you are paying for them to get the water to you. With electricity, there are two costs: generation and distribution. Generation is a finite resource. Distribution is getting the electricity to you. If you use more electricity, you pay more distribution cost. In other words, exactly the same as ISPs. Your Koolaid analogy makes no sense at all. If you stop using water, you stop paying. If you stop using your ISP, you stop paying. What were you trying to get at? The only real difference is that with water or electric you pay for your ACTUAL usage, which I assume the 'no bandwidth cap' crowd would really hate.

As for your 'what would Charter do' question: they would build more infrastructure, which they could afford to do because they would be collecting approx 3x the money.

Re:Last sentence is stupid

[NorQue]

The top paragraph points out that the 60mb service has no cap.

This doesn't make much sense, IMHO. If bandwidth was actually scarce or expensive, why not cap the users that use up most of the bandwidth at any given time? One 60 MBit connection takes away as much bandwidth as four 15 MBit connections. One single paying user vs four paying users. The user who could download 30*24*60*60 MBit a month gets unlimited access while the user who can download only a fourth of that gets capped to 100 GByte. The users who take away least of the bandwidth get the lowest cap.

Does anyone without a MBA get that?

Re:Last sentence is stupid

[Znork]

As long as capped services are advertized as having their max sustainable speed, ie, cap/month. The ISP may provide higher 'burst' speed, but with a cap, the cap/month is what you get.

Re:Last sentence is stupid

[CaptCovert]

Otherwise the stuff coming off, say netflix, seems pretty small and one would have to watch a hell of lot of TV to reach that limit.

Yes, one would have to watch a hell of a lot of TV to reach that limit. I have 6 'users' in my home, all of whom could theoretically be pulling down these movies. Will I hit my cap? Chances are, yes.

OTOH, why should I, someone that is using the bandwidth that I paid for (for completely legitimate reasons, mind), be penalized simply because you use less? You are not subsidizing my use of the internet, you're simply not using all of the internet available to you, and declaring that everyone should be pulled down to your standard, or you are 'losing money'.

Also, are you getting some sort of price break when my usage is capped? I mean, if the point of this is to save you money (in the form of a lack of subsidization), where are those savings?

To put this into perspective, let's consider a hypothetical: You own a gym membership. You use the gym in what is considered a 'standard' manner. Let's say, 1 hour a day, Monday - Friday. I own a gym membership as well. I, however, am a health nut, and devote 4 hours a day to physical fitness, including weekends (when I spend 6 a day). Well, the 'average' user (you) only uses the gym 1 hour a day, and even 99% of the gym members work out no more than 2 hours a day. Well, since it'll only impact a few, the gym decides to implement a policy that allows someone no more than, say, 21 hours per week (7 days a week, 3 hours per day). I mean, I am using up this finite resource (If I'm on a particular weight machine, you can't use it), and I'm using it a lot more than anyone else. Should my usage be capped off, simply because I'm using the service provided to me?

Analogies like this can be created for nearly ANY service industry that offers a flat rate. That is the risk that you, as a company, take when offering a flat rate. The fact that so many companies are trying to back out of it in the tech field now sickens me. Society would be up in arms quite a bit more if it started happening in other industries.

Re:Last sentence is stupid

[AngryNick]

I could contract with Koolaid to put a reservoir on my land where my water comes in, and I would pay them to provide Koolaid instead of water. Would I keep paying the water company?

I would imagine that the Kool-Aid people would only be interested in supplying you with drums their magically delicious unsweetened mixes so as to reduce their manufacturing and transportation costs. So, yes, you sould still have to pay the water company. Besides, you don't want all your LinuxWorld t-shirts coming out of the wash in shades of red #40.

How does this related to the thread...well, it doesn't really...except that maybe the internets these companies are selling us is really just some sort of unsweetened citric acid mix, that requires you to add sugar and water before it's worth a dime.

Re:Last sentence is stupid

[peragrin]

Crap I do a hundred megs a month on the 3G connection on my iPhone. Let alone wifi usage with it. That is just browsing tech sites. The average web site is nearly a meg in size so you can't visit more than 100 websites a month.

Just remember one YouTube video is sevral megs.

Re:Last sentence is stupid

[davester666]

but...they don't limit what web sites you can surf to...hence, they use the term "unlimited". Or are you trying to claim this term is misleading?

Re:Last sentence is stupid

[Chyeld]

Not to defend them, but the summary indicates GB caps not MB. 100GB is alot harder to pull down in a month, not that I haven't managed to do it on a crappy DSL line, thus making it even more likely someone with a nice fat cable pipe could do it.

Re:Last sentence is stupid

[xkenny13]

Not to defend them, but the summary indicates GB caps not MB. 100GB is alot harder to pull down in a month, not that I haven't managed to do it on a crappy DSL line, thus making it even more likely someone with a nice fat cable pipe could do it.

I can easily do 100gb in a week, now that all these 1080p MKV files are out there.

You know, ummm ... backups for my BluRay discs. :-)

Re:Last sentence is stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

While you don't have 6 wage earners in your home, I would think that this would be what was being talked about. There is no reason for a single person to subsidize the needs of a family. To apply the metaphor, should a family of four have to subside the garbage production of a family of six. To take this to the extreme, would you want to pay a higher bill if it meant a family of 10 could have truly unlimited access?

On on hand, the gym membership example is not applicable because the finite resources we are talking about are not the same. In the terms of a gym membership, it is possible to put more machines in, and there are several different machines. Even if one was a gym all day, it is unlikely that one would use any single resource for than an hour. It is not like a user on the network that can eat away at the bandwidth continuously. The example would be better if you bought a single membership, and allowed all six persons in the household to use it. This is, I believe, frowned upon at most gyms. They require you to buy a membership for each user, perhaps with a family discount. OTOH, the analogy does have merit, as I suspect if a person spent all day there every day the club might find it necessary to impose the informal limit.

In real terms, most consumption is on a per user basis. If one has cable, one has to rent a box for each set, even though the production and transmission costs remain exactly the same. I do share a internet connection, but that is ok because the usage is low. The specific example you cited, six people on one connection, just like six people on one membership, or six people on one ticket, proves the usefulness of capping the usage, and the value of the high speed plan. For two or three people, the $140 might be steep, but for 6 people, to insure full access, it is a steal at about $25 a person. Better value than a cable box. Sure it is expensive, but that is why families are becoming smaller in the developed west.

Re:Last sentence is stupid

[drinkypoo]

The limits kind of seem like bullshit. We pay more for all grades of connection than in (many) other countries, even in the cities where population density is highest, and get less for it. I might point out that we are seeing a re-consolidation of telcos back into Ma Bell (but this time with a Death Star twist) that can't possibly be good for consumers. And "oddly" the frequencies that were supposed to help solve this last mile problem are being held on to for another little slice of time so that more people can get their television converter box handouts.

Re:Last sentence is stupid

[Fulcrum of Evil]

Why do they? Access is the part that has value - extra bits, not so much. The current incremental cost of data transit is around $0.10-$0.20/GB and dropping. I honestly wouldn't care about caps if they just charged something reasonable for overages and had some options for tracking usage and throttling. seriously, if you could see how much you have left in a given month and set your connection to either scale down or charge you when you get above a certain level, what reasonable person could complain?

Re:Last sentence is stupid

[berberine]

What about things like MLB online. It's the only way to see the baseball games that I want to see. You take that stream (800k iirc) and multiply that by 3.5 hours per game. 6 games a week. How close to that cap would a person come just by watching baseball online?

I don't own a TV anymore so this is my only option. I suspect that I'll be limited in my other online activities if I renew. It seems like MLB won't be getting my money once these caps go through.

This doesn't even begin to address all the streaming videos that are out there that other companies want you to watch. You pretty much will be forced to put a monitoring program on your computer or pay through the nose.

Re:Last sentence is stupid

[loshwomp]

Absolutely - - - - as long as they stop advertising all plans below 60mbs as "unlimited".

I suspect this is a myth that's being perpetuated by self-righteous nerds. I'm sure there are exceptions, and I'd be happy to be proven wrong, but I haven't seen any such advertising in a LONG time.

Anyone reading Slashdot and who hasn't been living in a cave knows that your cable connection doesn't entitle you to saturate that connection 24/7. Less-technical users MIGHT be more easily mislead, but they're also not the ones torrenting fifty porn DVD ISOs -- oops, I mean Linux distros every day.

So who are these much-talked-about innocent people who have been defrauded?

Re:Last sentence is stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

ISP's have 2 types of costs: fixed cost to provide the connection and variable by usage costs to provide the bits. The variable part is covered by having tiered pricing based on access speed, the fixed part is covered as a % of the lowest tier cost.

If you really want to run a connection at 100% usage 100% of the time you can - they just cost *WAY* more to buy than you're willing to pay.

Re:Last sentence is stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're running out of space on your pipes, build bigger and more pipes. Don't try and coerce people to use *less* of your service.

I agree. They should build (and charge customers for) enough infrastructure to provide every single subscriber with the theoretical maximum 7.7 TB of bandwidth (30 days * 25 Mbps = 7.72476196 terabytes), even if they only send the occasional e-mail to the grandkids.

And while we're looking at theoretical maximum usage instead of actual usage, our local hospital can add a bed for every citizen in town on the off chance that they'll all end up in the hospital at the exact same time.

Re:Last sentence is stupid

[Chyeld]

What about things like MLB online. It's the only way to see the baseball games that I want to see. You take that stream (800k iirc) and multiply that by 3.5 hours per game. 6 games a week. How close to that cap would a person come just by watching baseball online?

About 28GB so go a head and splurge on that and upgrade to the HD 1.2mbps steam. It's still only 44GB per month.

Re:Last sentence is stupid

[JoshDanziger]

For gas and electricity, I pay PSE&G in New Jersey a distribution charge on top of what they charge for the actual gas/elec consumption.

Re:Last sentence is stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

A large part of the "per kWh" cost of electricity represents fixed costs such as the power station and transmission lines. This is particularly true in countries like France where it's mostly nuclear - the variable cost is almost zero. The capital expenditure has to be paid for.

Building bigger pipes costs money for upgrading routers and transmission equipment, and possibly making physical changes out in the field (very expensive) - costs which they'd have to pass on in the form of increased prices. So, they could either a) increase the price and piss everyone off or b) impose caps which won't affect 99% of their customers but which will significantly reduce their infrastructure costs. What would *you* do, in their place? Losing 1% of

(there is of course option C, or paying per GB, but most users don't have a good idea of how much a GB is, so won't be comfortable with that idea)

Re:Last sentence is stupid

[sfm]

The plan is fair, only if they drop the "unlimited internet" from
their advertising. In my book, 25 Gb != "unlimited" Hopefully
users will vote with their feet, assuming they are in a market that
offers a choice.

Re:Last sentence is stupid

[k-macjapan]

WTF would Charter do if all of a sudden every single subscriber signed up for the 60Meg tier and maxed out their bandwidth 24/7. They'd be back in the same fucking boat they're in now.

With the exception of having a tonne of extra money, which is what they're after.

Re:Last sentence is stupid

[digitalchinky]

You don't really quite understand how this works. All these utilities you mention require constant digging in the ground or precipitation on a regular basis. The internet, those pipes are already in place, bought and paid for. The difference in utility consumption for this stuff between zero capacity and full is so negligible as to be close enough to nothing, the infrastructure is a fixed and known cost.

Sure it costs money to roll out new infrastructure, but given how much unused bandwidth is actually available right now to these ISP's, it is clear that capacity limits are in the majority, an artificial way to increase the ingress of cash to pockets.

Look at ISP's who use port blocks to grade their customers between 'Residential Use' and 'Business', the techs behind the scenes know it's bullshit, but average Joe thinks he is getting gold plated electrons if he pays more.

Re:Last sentence is stupid

[stephanruby]

For instance, in garbage collection I grew up with unlimited garbage collection.

Garbage collectors do not advertise on television and do not give out free trial DVDs like some ISPs do (at least, not where I live). Garbage collection agreements are usually negotiated at the city level, or at the district level. Things negotiated at that kind of scale almost always get spelled out in detail.

And even when I do go to the dump, my car gets weighed in and my car gets weighed out, and I just pay for the difference in weight.

Anyway, don't think that the reason they're giving you for cutting services is the real reason they did it for. There could be a million and one reasons, and they're only going to give you a reason that you can't really verify and that you can't really fight them on (They would be stupid to do anything else).

Re:Last sentence is stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

who the hell says "meg?"

pretty much everyone i know?

Re:Last sentence is stupid

[mdielmann]

Also, are you getting some sort of price break when my usage is capped? I mean, if the point of this is to save you money (in the form of a lack of subsidization), where are those savings?

Ultimately, yes. The alternative to placing caps is to place more bandwidth, which is a huge capital cost. If they have to lay more fibre, they WILL raise prices to cover this, which will raise the rates for everyone.
The alternative is to have capped tiers, or a single tier. I personally prefer multiple tiers.
I will agree that that's no reason to bill capped plans as unlimited. OTOH, if the current business plan is losing the company money, they have no obligation to continue doing it, even if that was the original plan. As long as they allow you to cancel without penalty, I think they've met their obligations.

Re:Last sentence is stupid

[tmosley]

Or that we've been told about.

Re:Last sentence is stupid

[Ihmhi]

Can you say that analogy again, but using cars?

Re:Last sentence is stupid

[fredklein]

On on hand, the gym membership example is not applicable because the finite resources we are talking about are not the same. In the terms of a gym membership, it is possible to put more machines in, and there are several different machines.

And it is possible for the ISP to increase it's upstream bandwidth ('put in more machines'). It's also possible to use multiple frequencies and/or break up large areas covered by one headend into smaller areas ('several different machines').

But that would cost money. And god forbid the executives take home a measly 9.9 gajillion dollars instead of the full 10.

Re:Last sentence is stupid

[fredklein]

Anyone reading Slashdot and who hasn't been living in a cave knows that your cable connection doesn't entitle you to saturate that connection 24/7.

Yeah- having a water pipe that can deliver "1000 gallons a minute" doesn't mean you can actually get, you know, 1000 gallons a minute out of it.

Having a car with a top speed of 120mph certainly doesn't mean you can actually go 120.

And having 200amp electrical service certainly doesn't mean you can draw 200 amps from it.

Re:Last sentence is stupid

[stubob]

To this I would say, how much tv do you watch?

Newsflash: Charter to cap TV watching to 4 hours per day.

I don't watch much TV, and if I could, I would only download the shows I want to watch. That would save more bandwidth than streaming 200 channels 24/7 to my house. Tonight, for example, I will watch Lost and Damages that I downloaded yesterday. That will probably be it for TV.

But cable doesn't want that. They'd rather keep making the same amount of money and provide less service.

Re:Last sentence is stupid

[u-235-sentinel]

Precisely. If you want the "goods" then you should pay the piper. That's entirely fair. It's how everything from water usage to electric usage to gasoline usage works. The more you use, the more you pay. ----- As for myself, I'd be happy with a 100 Meg cap, since my traffic report says I only downloaded 55 Meg last month. Nowhere near the limit.

That's today. Tomorrow you're needs very likely will be different. Possibly requiring more bandwidth. That's just life.

20 years ago 10 Meg hard drives were huge. How can anyone possibly use that much data on a computer?

Today that's a single file or a portion of a file. Just one mp3 could be anywhere from 3-5 Megs alone.

Things always change. I don't see this being a good one

Re:Last sentence is stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah- having a water pipe that can deliver "1000 gallons a minute" doesn't mean you can actually get, you know, 1000 gallons a minute out of it.

However, if you were to draw 1000 gal/m from that water pipe all day every day, you would:

a) pay out the ass for the usage
b) be asked by the water company to try to limit your consumption, since the water is a finite resource.

Same goes for the car and electricity analogies.

Re:Last sentence is stupid

[loshwomp]

Yeah- having a water pipe that can deliver "1000 gallons a minute" doesn't mean you can actually get, you know, 1000 gallons a minute out of it.

Oh look, everyone. It's the guy I was referring to (in my GP post) who's been reading Slashdot but living in a cave.

Re:Last sentence is stupid

[fredklein]

However, if you were to draw 1000 gal/m from that water pipe all day every day, you would:

a) pay out the ass for the usage
b) be asked by the water company to try to limit your consumption, since the water is a finite resource.

a) Not if I was sold an 'unlimited' usage plan.
b) there are buildings/companies/industries that use WAY ore than that much water. When was the last time you heard of a water company cutting them off?

Ok

[LordKaT]

Alright, I'm willing to live with bandwidth caps as long as there are some tiers that are uncapped. It's the forced cap on all tiers - especially the high bandwidth ones - that really get my head scratching.

Of course this is coming from a guy who has am uncapped 15/1 ADSL2+ line.

Re:Ok

[Amouth]

I'm fine with caps at all ranges - as long as they are advertised as such - and i don't mean in the small print - if they advertise a connection as unlimited it should be just that.. unlimited.. not "unlimited until 200gb"

Re:Ok

[FooAtWFU]

I'm not so thrilled with it. I never liked the idea of cable internet, as a matter of fact: the Internet side is a substitute for their TV business (and becoming more so), so there's an incentive for them to abuse monopoly powers to be anti-competitive and do their best shut out new innovators in the market (like Apple Video Store and Youtube and Hulu and whatnot). With telco internet, mind you, they've got incentive to mess with your VOIP, but in practice I think VOIP is somewhat more resilient to being messed with...

Re:Ok

[nurb432]

But if they were truthful with their advertisements they wont get as much business.

And they know that in most areas you only have one ( or if you are lucky 2 ) choice.

Re:Ok

[dgatwood]

Even in large print, this borders on insanity. At 15 Mbps, 100 GB is only 15 hours at full bore in one direction. That's not an "always on" connection. That's an "occasionally on" connection, limited to a mere 2% of the advertised bandwidth when averaged over the month. The next tier is limited at 3%.

I think this falls under "truth in advertising". Companies advertising Internet service should be required to sell based on the average sustainable bandwidth, not peak bandwidth. That means for this 15 Mbps connection, it should be advertised as a 38.4 kbps connection---slower than dialup. There's something to tell your friends. "I'm paying $68 a month for this expensive internet connection, but to avoid getting cut off, I have to rate limit myself at half the speed of your $10 dialup line."

If I were on Charter cable, I would immediately drop service. Fortunately, I'm not. I've seen what that sleazy company is doing in terms of slashing local TV channels in TN. My parents used to get stations from Nashville and Memphis as part of their cable service at the insistence of the local government. Then, Tennessee decided to enact legislation that provides for statewide licensing of the right to provide cable service. Almost immediately after this, Charter cut those channels. The mayor is currently appealing to the FCC to force them to carry at least one station that provides decent coverage of Tennessee state news. Currently, all but two of the stations they carry are from Kentucky or Missouri, and only one of the TN stations has news at all (and it barely qualifies as news coverage, IMHO). As a result, they are basically cut off from all real coverage of local and regional events. Worse, they no longer get Memphis weather radar to warn about impending storms early on (the Paducah weather radar is okay, but it doesn't provide nearly as early a warning), so Charter is putting the health and safety of residents at risk as well, all to save them from having to maintain their repeater towers.

In the grand scheme of things, the bandwidth caps are just the tip of the iceberg when talking about what a disaster Charter cable has been---poor analog signals, frequent loss of cable modem service, a couple of days ago they lost all their upstream so you could get to sites in town but no farther out, etc. This company clearly got in way, way over their heads by acquiring more local cable companies than they could handle, and as a result, they're bleeding red and are struggling desperately to keep from completely collapsing. I say let them collapse, and moreover, demand that they sell their facilities to the local governments so that the wires can be managed and maintained as they should be---by a municipally-owned cable company. That's the only way residents are ever going to get good (or even adequate) cable service in rural communities.

Re:Ok

[dgatwood]

My bad. I got bits and bytes backwards in the google calculator. It's about 40 kBps, or 320 kbps, which is a slightly more respectable but still pathetically absurd number.

Re:Ok

[Afforess]

I believe this quote applies:

"In Germany they came first for the Communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time no one was left to speak up."
                - Martin Niemoeller

Re:Ok

[billcopc]

The problem is, if you "accept" caps, then an unreasonable cap will be forced upon you.

This reminds me of all the Docsis 3.0 "deals" where an 18mbit 60gb monthly plan costs more than a 10mbit 120gb monthly plan. It's nearly twice the speed but you only get half the total transfer allocation. BULLSHIT!

It's good that (for now) Charter's top tier is still uncapped. They seem to actually get it, "it" being "what power users want". Now, that said, I still think 250gb is extremely generous. I run a few seedboxes overseas, and I have yet to see a single account, not even my own, exceed 250gb/month.

Re:Ok

[billcopc]

If I were on Charter cable, I would immediately drop service.

No, you would not. You would be happy to have internet access at all. You have to realize 100gb is still a hefty chunk of data. I don't care if you're into porn, anime or multi-monitor Youtube asshattery, it still takes a fair bit of work to suck down and consume that much data, and I'm sure you'd rather suck down your 100gb in 15mbit bursts, than at a steady 40kbit. Download takes a few seconds, then you can enjoy the content instead of waiting for it.

I'm not in support of caps, but even as a heavy bandwidth user, I think 100gb for "normal people" is reasonable, and 250gb for the next tier up is more than most people can reasonably use right now.

Or, if you're one of those fucktards on DSLreports who boasts about downloading terabytes a month on your $68 cable plan, well you're spending a lot more than that on hard disks or blank DVDs to store all that garbage. In that case, I have no sympathy whatsoever. They offer a hyperfast uncapped plan that's cheaper than anything I could procure in a freaking datancenter, for crying out loud! If the extra $50 is too much for you, tough tits.

Re:Ok

[Sandman1971]

Agreed completely.

My ISP put in a 60 gig cap last year. I surf, download anime, work from home 4-5 days a week, listen to streaming music, watch videos on youtube, play X-Box live (includes downloading videos, demos and lots of RockBand/Guitar Hero DLCs), play World of Warcraft, am constantly uploading pictures to Flickr and my blog, do a lot of emails (receive 300-400 a day for work alone), download about a dozen weekly podcasts and do the occasional download. I also download updates for the multiple OSes that I'm running (Windows on 2 machines and Linux on another).

My wife surfs the net, does email, listens to streaming music and plays some online games.

And you know what? We average around 40 gigs a month. Some months its in the low 30s, some months its in the low 50s.

Once our kids are old enough to start using the internet I'm hoping that this cap will be a little higher, but even then an 80-100 gig cap would be acceptable.

Re:Ok

[Eivind]

Dunno. 320kbps, averaged 24/7. But few people use the internet 24/7. And even if they did, 320kbps is more than you'll use doing anything other than video-streaming or downloading. Web-surfing or game-playing or radio-listening will use significantly less than that.

Yeah, it's easy to use 100GB by downloading a few multi-gigabyte files, but with other use, not so very easy. I think they're right, they claim 99% of their customers use less than this today, and I'm inclined to believe that claim.

Re:Ok

[dgatwood]

There are at least three major problems with your logic.

First, the customer is not always in control of their traffic. We're seeing games that use P2P for updates, etc., viruses trying to spread themselves, etc., and I'm sure we'll be seeing a lot more of that in the short-term future.

Second, a lot of folks are getting more and more of their video content through either video streaming or downloads from services like iTunes or Unbox. I would expect that within five years, a 100GB wall will seem unreasonably low, particularly with HD movies. An HD movie trailer takes over 100 megs at 720p. For TV shows @ 20 minutes apiece, between the high definition version and the standard-def version for iPod, you're at a gigabyte. That means a single two hour movie should average about 6 gigs. Watching one movie per day would require nearly double that bandwidth cap. That's legal movie downloading I'm talking about here. Heaven help you if you decide to download some TV shows, too.

As bandwidth becomes more ubiquitous, expect services like YouTube to also increase their quality and the bandwidth associated with it. They've already done that a couple of times. It won't be long before many frequent YouTube users start hitting that 100GB wall as well.

Third, things like video chat can push 1.5Mbps at high quality settings. Even at that rate, with a 100GB cap, you hit a wall just beyond 6 days. Thus, your teenager communicating with his/her girlfriend/boyfriend all day on Saturday and part of Sunday each week can easily eat more than half your month's bandwidth allotment by itself. If you make it a three-way or four-way video chat, you can burn through 100GB pretty easily.

Those are the facts as I see them. The upswell in high definition multimedia content, video messaging, etc. is pushing more and more users to move larger and larger amounts of data on a regular basis, and a 100GB limit is just too easy for a typical technologically inclined family to exceed. The networks are simply going to have to keep up. If they don't, they are likely to start burning through customers before too much longer.

well

[Travelsonic]

Thank god I don't use 'em.

Re:Well

[EGenius007]

People I know who've run into the text message cap one month have contacted their cell phone companies and received pretty much identical responses. "If you'd like to upgrade to our monthly unlimited plan we'd be happy to retroactively apply it to last month's bill."

Why? Because $NN per month every month for the foreseeable future is a much better deal for them than $XXX dollars and an angry customer. Now if you called and canceled the unlimited plan the next day and go over again, good luck getting them to cut you slack twice.

$65 per mbps is a bit expensive, assholes

[slifox]

Just like Comcast... I'm getting sick of this crap

If you get 250GB/month, then you're actually allowed a constant usage of 0.78mbps, regardless of whether you can burst up to 15mbps (or whatever).

Comcast internet service runs $50 to $70 on average, depending on the burst speed you get.
However, the limit is always 250GB/month. So doing the math, you're paying $65 to $90 per megabit/sec!

At any given datacenter, you can buy (100mbit-burstable) bandwidth at $5 per megabit/sec (price includes renting a server, rack space, power, and cooling).

Someone will of course respond "then don't use their service." Well, thats great, I'd love to. Unfortunately my government subsidy to Comcast gave Comcast a monopoly on the lines... and for some reason there are areas of the city that are "designated RCN" areas, while others are "designated Comcast" areas. What is this bullshit??

I'm angry at telecommunications companies.

Re:$65 per mbps is a bit expensive, assholes

[Anonymous Coward]

Tell me anyone who has 5$/Mbit for 100meg.

Cogent is 8$ for 200meg commit on a gig handoff. And then you still have to pay for crossconnects and renting space.

50$ a meg is actually not bad with a 1meg commit.

Re:$65 per mbps is a bit expensive, assholes

[harlows_monkeys]

Someone will of course respond "then don't use their service." Well, thats great, I'd love to. Unfortunately my government subsidy to Comcast gave Comcast a monopoly on the lines... and for some reason there are areas of the city that are "designated RCN" areas, while others are "designated Comcast" areas. What is this bullshit??

You didn't look hard enough for alternatives. T1 service is available almost everywhere, with no caps.

Re:$65 per mbps is a bit expensive, assholes

[Shakrai]

T1 service is available almost everywhere, with no caps.

Too bad it's A) unaffordable, B) not really fast enough for a lot of applications (streaming high quality video comes to mind)

Re:$65 per mbps is a bit expensive, assholes

[Anonymous Coward]

You didn't look hard enough for alternatives. T1 service is available almost everywhere, with no caps.

Who the fsck wants a shitty T1? Go and look at the pathetic bandwidth you get on a T1. Ohh, maybe we should all spend a fscking fortune on T3s? Hmm, even they're getting outdone by cable and fiber connections to the home these days.

Re:$65 per mbps is a bit expensive, assholes

[Nicholas Evans]

1.5mbps is not terribly attractive.

Re:$65 per mbps is a bit expensive, assholes

[fulldecent]

I am going to consider this post a rant unless the author is willing to take initiative and find these subsidies and locate the section where these providers are liable if they fail to deliver.

Re:$65 per mbps is a bit expensive, assholes

[Anonymous Coward]

actually, $65 per Mbs is not that much at all. try getting a T1 dropped to your living room, and then come back with those numbers. These caps are the only way that the cable companies can deliver at those prices. Of course, the whole capping problem opens the door to whether I would call this false advertising. "$64.95mo for 12Mbs down and 2Mbs up, as long as you don't actually USE IT."

Re:$65 per mbps is a bit expensive, assholes

[earthcreed]

I may be doing the math wrong, but I got about 100kbs. which means you are paying $600 per megabit/sec.

Re:$65 per mbps is a bit expensive, assholes

[AK Marc]

If you get 250GB/month, then you're actually allowed a constant usage of 0.78mbps, regardless of whether you can burst up to 15mbps (or whatever).

For Internet "use" (meaning actual interactive use, streaming HD video, VoIP calls, web surfing, game playing, etc.) you are sitting there. Presuming you work, you spend 9 hours a day at an 8 hour a day job (lunch) plus an hour each way for the average person, and you have lost 11 hours a day. Add in 8 hours of sleeping. That's 19 hours a day. You blow 1 hour a day on bathroom time getting ready for work, fixing food, etc. We'll assume you are on the Internet while eating. So, for a weekday, you have about 4 hours a day of Internet use. Toss in 16 hours every weekend day (8 hours of sleep, and nothing but Internet all day long) and you are looking at being at a computer around 50 hours a week. That's more like 3 Mbps. So, what are you doing that is 3 Mbps for every second you are sitting at the computer? You can stream regular TV 100% of your usage, while downloading ISOs, checking mail, chatting, calling people over VoIP and such without ever hitting the cap, depending on compression, you could even be watching HD TV 100% of the time. Even if you are a porn downloader, with common compression, you could download 24/7 and still download faster than you can watch it without ever hitting your cap. I'm sure people out there will hit it. But I have no idea what they are doing that would qualify as "residential Internet use" that would have them smack a 250 GB/month limit.

Re:$65 per mbps is a bit expensive, assholes

[nurb432]

Welcome to America comrade, here is your jar of Vaseline. You are gonna need it.

Re:$65 per mbps is a bit expensive, assholes

[palegray.net]

Speakeasy offers a product called "OneLink DSL" which provides up to 6 Mbps on a dedicated data line, and doesn't require phone service. Plans start at $55.95/month, and include a static IP. If you go with their "OneLink SelectPlus" plans, 4 static IPs are provided. All plans have up to 768 Kbps upstream, depending on which one you choose. There are options out there.

Re:$65 per mbps is a bit expensive, assholes

[MobyDisk]

I for one am glad for the caps. The #1 thing I want is for the terms of service to state the service, not promise infinite speeds and infinite bandwidth. The caps they put in place are completely reasonable.

If you get 250GB/month, then you're actually allowed a constant usage of 0.78mbps, regardless of whether you can burst up to 15mbps (or whatever).

Sounds about right. Were you meaning for this to be a complaint?

So doing the math, you're paying $65 to $90 per megabit/sec!

So what? That metric would only be relevant if you were using bandwidth constantly. Since home users do not do so, then this complaint is moot. If you are using it constantly, then you are doing more than "residential" type stuff. Same thing goes with any infrastructure: power, water, gas, roads -- they are provided residentially at different rates because they assume certain limitations of use. Otherwise, it becomes commercial and you need to move to something else.

At any given datacenter, you can buy (100mbit-burstable) bandwidth at $5 per megabit/sec (price includes renting a server, rack space, power, and cooling).

Fine, but the providers to those data centers don't have to provide service to every house in a neighborhood. They only have to provide it to specific locations, and only those that are profitable to them. Hence, they offer bandwidth at a discount.

If you have a few hundred thousand dollars, they will happily run a line to your house, and provide you with $5 per megabit/sec service.

Unfortunately my government subsidy to Comcast gave Comcast a monopoly...

I can't argue with that paragraph.

I'm angry at telecommunications companies.

The government is to blame for the monopoly situation. So I place my anger there. The telecoms are actually starting to come around (hence the bandwidth caps).

Re:$65 per mbps is a bit expensive, assholes

[Wiscocrew]

Some people use their connection when they're not sitting at their computer.

Re:$65 per mbps is a bit expensive, assholes

[msu320]

Thats why I use the 1024kbit/384kbit option from comcast. I would only reach the cap if I download ~25 days straight.

Re:$65 per mbps is a bit expensive, assholes

[Wiscocrew]

And some people have more than one person using the connection.

Re:$65 per mbps is a bit expensive, assholes

[bignetbuy]

If only I had a mod point... Well said. A careful analysis of the facts about a pretty hefty cap -- at least for Comcast. Well done.

Re:$65 per mbps is a bit expensive, assholes

[AK Marc]

If they are, then they are either downloading things for later, and then should have off time when at the computer when using that item, or they are not using it in a "residential service" manner (servers and such).

Re:$65 per mbps is a bit expensive, assholes

[silas_moeckel]

You do realize that at $5 a megabit a sec including the server etc your going into an oversubscribed setting? Bandwidth at it's cheapest is $5 a mbs from cogent and in the upper teens from any respectable source.

Re:$65 per mbps is a bit expensive, assholes

[genner]

Speakeasy offers a product called "OneLink DSL" which provides up to 6 Mbps on a dedicated data line, and doesn't require phone service. Plans start at $55.95/month, and include a static IP. If you go with their "OneLink SelectPlus" plans, 4 static IPs are provided. All plans have up to 768 Kbps upstream, depending on which one you choose. There are options out there.

Not in my town apprently. I just checked their site and they're not availible in my area :(

Re:$65 per mbps is a bit expensive, assholes

[StikyPad]

I'd wager heavily that most of the 250+ GBers are those who get new broadband and/or recently discovered the joys of torrents and/or just hit age 15.. (14? 13??). Once they get a couple TB of pr0n under their belts (so to speak), they'll probably become more discriminating in what they download, for the simple fact that not all pr0n = good pr0n.

Re:$65 per mbps is a bit expensive, assholes

[MBGMorden]

Except that when using 1 item one can easily be grabbing another. I have almost a dozen TV subscriptions via iTunes (I don't watch broadcast TV anymore). I subscribe to probably 3 times that many podcasts - some audio, some are video (and some of THOSE are in HD video - GeekBriefTV for example is in HD and comes out nearly daily). While I'm listening or watching some of those more can be (and often are) downloading.

I also have a paid (and legal) subscription to an "adult" video site that offers 5 full length DVD's of content every day - also in near-HD quality. While I don't download all 5 DVD's (we'd be talking 4-5 GB per day just on that one site), I do download 4-5 scenes per day from there, which totals a gig or 2 per day. And since I don't want that slowing down my any of my MMORPG's or Ventrillo client when I'm at home and playing, those downloads are set via a download manager to only actually run after I've gone to sleep or am at work.

And naturally having an Xbox360 too I'm often downloading either game demo's or outright game purchases from there.

The old "people just check email and look at the web" mentality just isn't hold anymore. It wasn't really holding 3 years ago, but the ISP's chose to stick their fingers in their ears and ignore the industry.

Re:$65 per mbps is a bit expensive, assholes

[Migraineman]

But I have no idea what they are doing that would qualify as "residential Internet use" that would have them smack a 250 GB/month limit.

I have a 320GB disk in my machine. Once a month, I boot a linux live CD and do a drive-image backup to an off-site machine. Blammo, there goes my 250GB limit, for a *very* residential-use application.

No, it's not the most efficient way to do a backup, but it sure is easy and dirt simple. There's nothing in my contract with my ISP that mandates I shall use my internet connection in the most efficient manner possible ... and at 60Mbps, the effective transfer rate is about 6MBytes/sec. 250GB of transfer will take about 41666 seconds, or almost 12 hours. Let it run overnight or while I'm at work.

Re:$65 per mbps is a bit expensive, assholes

[MBGMorden]

Bandwidth at it's cheapest is $5 a mbs from cogent and in the upper teens from any respectable source.

For some reason that line just invoked some weird future where audiophiles are claiming how much better their downloads sound and how the "subtle nuances" are so much better given the high quality of their bandwidth that brought them the file.

MonsterBandwidth: A Series of Gold Plated Tubes

Re:$65 per mbps is a bit expensive, assholes

[cheesebilly]

You blow 1 hour a day on bathroom time getting ready for work, fixing food, etc.

Last I checked, only Kramer fixed his food in the bathroom... in the shower specifically.

Re:$65 per mbps is a bit expensive, assholes

[Anonymous Coward]

And everybody's bandwidth use will go up over time.

Re:$65 per mbps is a bit expensive, assholes

[Hyppy]

Or have multiple residents in a household that access the connection at different times.

Re:$65 per mbps is a bit expensive, assholes

[lidocaineus]

$5/meg?!? Yeah, if you committed to something like a full gigabit. Sorry, $5000/month is not competitive.

The closest you can get in a datacenter is probably around $50/95th with a burstable 1 meg commit, on a so-so network. This is still oodles faster than most consumer level connections.

Note to people that don't know what a 1 meg commit is: it has nothing to do with a bandwidth cap of 1 meg/sec.

Re:$65 per mbps is a bit expensive, assholes

[silas_moeckel]

Cogent works most of the time and is dirt cheap if you live in there footprint. In general bandwidth is treated like a commodity and for the most part that works. I build/support networks for a living and Cogent has it's place but if your solely reliant on them you will get burned. For a 9-5 office paying 1k a month for a 100mbs link if you loose a work day or two a year it's an acceptable comprise and why the CTO gets paid the big bucks to sell that and manage expectations that you will loose a couple work days a year to save that money. For somebody in the ISP space to be solely reliant on it it means loosing customers and a month or two's gross income a year it's a non starter.

Now where did I put my platinum plated balanced hi fidelity Ethernet cable to attach to my hand made switch and tube amplified Ethernet card. I don't want my flac files to get interference when I play them back from the server.

Re:$65 per mbps is a bit expensive, assholes

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

I'm sure people out there will hit it. But I have no idea what they are doing that would qualify as "residential Internet use" that would have them smack a 250 GB/month limit.

Here is the problem with that attitude - just because few if anyone might have a "residential" use that fits this profile today does not mean things won't change. If these kinds of caps become common place, there is essentially zero chance that any new application that does require much larger amounts of bandwidth will ever achieve critical mass. At least not in this country. These caps effectively freeze out any new high-bandwidth innovative uses of the internet. We will be frozen at 2009 levels for the foreseeable future.

That's what monopolies do, they kill long term progress in order to maximize their own short term profits.

Re:$65 per mbps is a bit expensive, assholes

[Bengie]

Maybe I'm paying for Netflix HD and each movie is ~3GB (3600kbps bitrate) each and Watching 1 movie each night put me up to 100GB. How do I still have bandwidth left to download my linux ISO, my online back-ups, and Windows Patches?

these are all "residential Internet use"

Re:$65 per mbps is a bit expensive, assholes

[Anonymous Coward]

Awwww, you don't want to pay for what you want. You'll forgive me for not giving a shit.

Re:$65 per mbps is a bit expensive, assholes

[The End Of Days]

Feel free to find a service that provides what you want. You may have to pay more for having such a ridiculous usage pattern. Too bad for you, it really isn't a *very* residential-use application despite your declaration.

Re:$65 per mbps is a bit expensive, assholes

[Shakrai]

You have no idea what you are talking about. With a T-1 you aren't paying all that money for dedicated bandwidth. The bandwidth (i.e: port) charges on my T-1 lines has never been more than a quarter of the total charge and is usually less than that. The bulk of the expense with a T-1 goes to the 'loop' charge, i.e: the money you are paying the local telco to lease two (or more with certain implementations) pairs on their plant. There's a reason why the old nomenclature referred to T-1s as "leased lines" because that's exactly what it is and the reason why it's so expensive. It has little to do with bandwidth.

A cable provider could deliver dedicated bandwidth to you for a lot less than a T-1 line costs -- they just have to pay attention to their contention ratios. The idea of a bandwidth crunch is overblown with existing technology -- to say nothing of future technologies such as DOCSIS 3.0 or fiber to the home.

Re:$65 per mbps is a bit expensive, assholes

[Braino420]

I for one am glad for the caps.

You're glad you're getting less from your ISP even though you're paying them the same amount? Very suspicious.

The #1 thing I want is for the terms of service to state the service, not promise infinite speeds and infinite bandwidth.

Everybody would; that's the problem. Comcast et al have promised "unlimited" and that's what everyone expects. I'm kind of surprised that you would take a cap as apposed to Comcast providing what they originally offered. Or, Comcast could also re-evaluate the way they have been selling and offer a choice to their existing customers. Instead they simply change the contract. All within their rights, but I'm still shocked you're satisfied by that.

The caps they put in place are completely reasonable.

For you. For now.

That metric would only be relevant if you were using bandwidth constantly. Since home users do not do so, then this complaint is moot.

What? Citation needed. Have you seen the difference between business/residential rates for internet? I think if you did, you would stop considering this as a possibility for any home users. There needs to be a tier in-between that is reasonable.

If you have a few hundred thousand dollars, they will happily run a line to your house, and provide you with $5 per megabit/sec service.

Wow, so you do seem to know the difference. So you are totally unreasonable then. Great.

The government is to blame for the monopoly situation. So I place my anger there. The telecoms are actually starting to come around (hence the bandwidth caps).

This is what really gets me about your post, and why I think you probably work for some ISP. The government is to blame for giving them money to set up an infrastructure? Aww poor monopoly, you should be allowed to abuse it! As John Stossel would say, "Give me a break!"

If you don't work for a ISP, it's important that you understand that it's reasonable for the ISPs to use all of the money that has been given to them thus far and upgrade their infrastructure. Many countries are waay far ahead of us now as it relates to residential broadband. But instead of upgrading their infrastructure, they are choosing to spend money looking for ways to limit their customers. I don't know why you wouldn't want to join most other countries with their 100+Mbps broadband connections, but this is definitely putting up road blocks to us getting there. Please look a few years into the future and see the potential that such fat connections would have for the internet and see how ISPs are getting in the way of that. You may not need these fat connections now, but as people get them there will be more services that can saturate them.

Re:$65 per mbps is a bit expensive, assholes

[RCourtney]

I can see it now....

Comcast: "We're sorry, your internet account has already reached its limit for the month."

Customer: "From our 3 TVs that are hooked up to the internet now that the internet is becoming a viable option to Cable and Satallite for content?"

Comcast: "Yes, but you can always sign up for Comcast Cable and have uninterrupted access! And we dedicate far more of our coaxial bandwidth to that than internet anyways."

Re:$65 per mbps is a bit expensive, assholes

[slimjim8094]

Even if you are a porn downloader, with common compression, you could download 24/7 and still download faster than you can watch it

Would you care to make a wager?

Re:$65 per mbps is a bit expensive, assholes

[geekoid]

I have a wife and two children.
AS we movie to more and more online content, it will be easy to hit that cap.

based on what we are advertised for, residential internet seems to mean being able to stream media anywhere in your house.

Re:$65 per mbps is a bit expensive, assholes

[PitaBred]

The telecoms are the ones who wasted the money for no benefit, even though that is specifically what it was for. They are not blameless.

Re:$65 per mbps is a bit expensive, assholes

[MobyDisk]

You're glad you're getting less from your ISP even though you're paying them the same amount? Very suspicious... I'm kind of surprised that you would take a cap as apposed to Comcast providing what they originally offered.

Except that what they originally offered is physically impossible. So I'm willing to accept a reasonable compromise.

What? Citation needed.

Not sure what you want a citation on. So let me clarify: Home users don't use bandwidth constantly. Businesses do. That's the big difference, and that is why business internet is more expensive. The original poster was saying that business internet was cheaper, but it sounded like you agreed with me that that isn't true. It is only true if you ignore the fact that the business got charged 100k to run the line, or that it was done for free since they would recoup the cost by selling bandwidth. That's definitely the case with a data center.

There needs to be a tier in-between that is reasonable.

Yes, tiers are good. I know that for my area, Comcast has 3 tiers. They probably need to offer tiers for the bandwidth caps too -- but since they say only 1% of the users would be affected by the proposed caps, there's not much point in offering too many tiers just for them. Didn't the article say that the 60MBps tier has no cap? Seems like a pretty good option to me.

--

Overall, you seem to be assuming that 15Mbps with no caps is possible in a residential setting. If that was the case, then I would agree with you on most of these points. Since it is not possible (at least, not now) reasonable caps make sense. Those caps should increase as new bandwidth is rolled out. There is no reason to assume that won't happen, since bandwidth has gone up over the years - so the caps should too.

I agree that ISPs should be upgrading their capacity instead of throttling. And that the arguments that they can't do it are bogus. But caps are still a necessary and reasonable approach to fixing the problem of the 1% who waaay overuse bandwidth. I'd rather see a reasonable cap than having them block my bittorrent.

Also, I don't think that cable companies got money from the government. Maybe telephone companies did, I dunno. I don't think so though -- they don't get public funds -- they just get the monopoly privileges to lay the cables.

Lastly, I'm flattered I now know enough about telecom that you think I work for an ISP. If you really want to know my resume, I'm not hard to find on the 'nets.

Re:$65 per mbps is a bit expensive, assholes

[Braino420]

Except that what they originally offered is physically impossible.

Indeed, the ISPs oversold.

So I'm willing to accept a reasonable compromise.

Of course! But the customer got no say in the "compromise", they got reduced service for the same costs.

Not sure what you want a citation on. So let me clarify: Home users don't use bandwidth constantly. Businesses do.

Citation doesn't mean that I want you to simply repeat yourself. I want to know why you assume that. I've certainly never heard of that. In my experience, they may not use the bandwidth constantly, but they do use their bandwidth when they aren't physically at the computer. This is also beginning to change with more people using IP phones, which is also degraded by poor ISP service. Business broadband doesn't mean you use teh internets all of the time, it means you are /guaranteed/ to get the agreed upon bandwidth.

Didn't the article say that the 60MBps tier has no cap? Seems like a pretty good option to me.

Sure that's what the article said, I'm referring to the current state of broadband around the US though. As it stands now, I can't even get a quarter of that and Comcast (the ISP monopoly in my area) doesn't offer one with no limit.

Overall, you seem to be assuming that 15Mbps with no caps is possible in a residential setting. If that was the case, then I would agree with you on most of these points. Since it is not possible (at least, not now) reasonable caps make sense. Those caps should increase as new bandwidth is rolled out. There is no reason to assume that won't happen, since bandwidth has gone up over the years - so the caps should too.

Assuming? Read the news; there are many countries out there (as I said) that already get so much more. You seem to assume that in the years to come ISPs will all of a sudden become generous. What are you basing that assumption on? They have a monopoly and are potentially abusing that monopoly. The problem is, consumers can't "vote with their wallets" because they have no other ISP to go to.

Also, I don't think that cable companies got money from the government. Maybe telephone companies did, I dunno. I don't think so though -- they don't get public funds -- they just get the monopoly privileges to lay the cables.

Not only was the whole idea and early implementation straight from the US government, they also helped fund big Universities that became interconnected. The whole internet was originally for non-commercial use. It became commercialized, and not only did ISPs get money from the government to help connect public schools, they were also given rights to lay the fiber and as you say the monopoly for the low low. You mentioned yourself that it costs hundreds of thousands for a business to get fiber layed for them . Thats prob hundreds of yards of fiber. Imagine a few of those going across the US and even to other countries.

Lastly, I'm flattered I now know enough about telecom that you think I work for an ISP. If you really want to know my resume, I'm not hard to find on the 'nets.

Quite the opposite, I'm afraid. You seemed almost pleased to have caps, with no real obvious advantage to yourself. The only thing I can conclude is that maybe you profited by it some other way.*shrugs*

Re:$65 per mbps is a bit expensive, assholes

[billcopc]

You seem to ignore the fact that GP is a cave-dwelling troll who downloads furry pr0n 24/7.

Re:$65 per mbps is a bit expensive, assholes

[billcopc]

If that's a *very* residential-user application, then I hope I never have to share a datacenter with you. You know, you could just do a regular backup to a portable hard drive and store it at the office, like a sane backup freak would do.

Just because we have the ability to generate massive amounts of junk data, does not mean we should.

Re:$65 per mbps is a bit expensive, assholes

[ShooterNeo]

You're the first slashdotter I've seen who actually confesses to downloading porn. So, I have to ask : why do you have to download so much of it. And second, where's the good stuff? What I don't like is that porn on say youporn usually has ugly, fat partners. But the only porn with hot partners is commercial and it tends to be incredibly fake. Where can you find porn that has 'pretty girl next door', a male partner that is not hideously ugly nor orange from tanning and grotesque from steroids, and the pair acts like a realistic couple? Where the male actually can finish the job from the stimulation of his partner's vagina alone, and doesn't have to beat himself off afterwards.

Re:$65 per mbps is a bit expensive, assholes

[Braino420]

It became commercialized, and not only did ISPs get money from the government to help connect public schools, they were also given rights to lay the fiber and as you say the monopoly for the low low. You mentioned yourself that it costs hundreds of thousands for a business to get fiber layed for them . Thats prob hundreds of yards of fiber. Imagine a few of those going across the US and even to other countries.

I misspoke there, fiber didn't really start getting put down until the late 90's. Many of the ISPs that laid the fiber became bankrupt along with .coms that also owned fiber, to the benefit of our current ISPs. I also forgot to mention that ISPs are on the begging list for a fat gov bailout of 9 billion too...

Re:$65 per mbps is a bit expensive, assholes

[billcopc]

You upgrade to the next tier up with 250gb ? Seems to me, if you were able to afford an HD setup and Netflix membership, you can probably spring an extra $20 for faster internet with a more generous cap. That's the whole point of tiered service: those who use it less, pay less.

My mother has a nice cheap 5mbit 10gb service which is quicker than she is and cheaper than a 2nd phone line; she's happy with it. Most of my friends have a 10mbit 100gb service, and they're happy with it. I pay a bit more and I have 10mbit uncapped, and I'm quite happy with it. I think it's perfectly normal to pay more in order to get more.

But hey, what the hell do I know, I'm just a movie-loving geek with a 1080p display, a few terabytes of media and a fast internet connection. I get to watch what I want, when I want it, and I pay what I think is a fair price for that convenience.

Re:$65 per mbps is a bit expensive, assholes

[billcopc]

For some reason, your reply just invoked some weird future where everyone is a complete ignorant talking out of their ass... OH SHIT THAT'S THE PRESENT!

The "quality" of a pipe over another is the result of several measurable and meaningful factors. Latency is one of them, uptime is another, peering/saturation, etc. There's more to bandwidth than just volume. For example, I lease cheap servers with cheap bandwidth in Europe. I mean *REALLY* cheap. I get pretty bad latency since my bits have to cross an ocean to reach me, but man is it ever cheap and I don't mind the latency so much. I'm not running millisecond-critical stuff, I just host a few web sites and large-ish files.

Cogent's bandwidth is "bad", because they have slightly greater latency than most, because their peering points are a bit more congested than most, because their incident response times are a little longer than most, and because they might be a little less reliable than most. But they're significantly cheaper than the rest and 99% as good.

It's not that Cogent is "bad", they're just slightly riskier than the others, by a rather small margin. They're still pretty damned decent and an amazing value for the money, but if your online business cannot afford a few hours of downtime or absolutely ass routing/latency once in a while, then Cogent can and will ruin you. That's partly why lots of places use a mix of different backhauls, so when everything is peachy, they can route traffic over the cheapest peer, but if it goes down they switch to a backup to ensure 100% uptime until the Cogent techs finish their Naxx raid and fix your problem.

Re:$65 per mbps is a bit expensive, assholes

[MBGMorden]

You're the first slashdotter I've seen who actually confesses to downloading porn. So, I have to ask : why do you have to download so much of it.

Watch porn? Heck I went to two porn conventions (AVN AE Expo and Exxxotica Miami) last year. I'm well past the age where I need to hide the fact that I look at porn. I'm an adult guy and I like adult entertainment. That means downloading/watching porn, heading to the strip club when I feel like it, and hiring an escort every now and then.

As to why I download so much, I collect scenes done by certain performers. Given that in the industry one never knows when a girl is going to leave the business, and after she does it sometimes becomes hard to track down her scenes (I'm STILL looking for a scene between Stephanie Swift and Anna Malle from a 1995 movie called "Final Obsession"), I try to grab the ones I want when I can. It usually only takes about 10-15 minutes of my time per day to setup my DL manager to grab the new ones I want.

Sorting them can be somewhat tedious though (which is why I'm pretty backed up on that issue). What I really want though is a true database driven filesystem with good metadata support. For all the bullshit gimmicks people tout about up and coming stuff that's gonna be wonderful on computers, that's what I see as being the "killer app". For porn, movies, documents, whatever. Rather than just having directories I'd love to simply define attributes that files might have, be able to assign (multiple) values to those, and then define virtual directories ( a la the smart playlists in iTunes) that I can use on a normal basis, while maintaining the ability to an actual filter/query rather than simple searches based on filenames.

As to porn quality - I'm actually into the commercial/fake stuff, so no help from me there ;).

Re:$65 per mbps is a bit expensive, assholes

[MBGMorden]

whoosh

I was just making a joke about what springs to mind when people start talking about the quality of anything electronic these days. Take your pills and calm down.

Re:$65 per mbps is a bit expensive, assholes

[MobyDisk]

Of course! But the customer got no say in the "compromise", they got reduced service for the same costs.

No, you already have the reduced service. You can't download at max rate 24/7. The cap just presents itself in a different way - variable service quality, timeouts, hidden QOS and throttling, etc.

That really is the crux of this. You think your service is reduced when the ISP is really telling you accurately what you already had and making an official solution to the problem instead of hiding it.

You seem to assume that in the years to come ISPs will all of a sudden become generous. What are you basing that assumption on?

History. Comcast has increased their bandwidth every year. 3 years ago I could get You seemed almost pleased to have caps, with no real obvious advantage to yourself. The only thing I can conclude is that maybe you profited by it some other way.*shrugs*

No, you are ignoring my reasoning and resorting to ad hominem attacks. It comes down to this: either accept throttling and secret ISP code that drops packets -- or accept a cap. Your choice. I'll take the cap. It's fair, measurable, and network neutral. The only people who lose-out with the caps is the pirates running FTP sites all day.

P.S. As you pointed out, the government only paid for broadband at schools. The government did not pay anyone to give you broadband at your home. The old "the ISPs got government money, so I want infinite bandwidth and no caps" argument isn't reality.

Re:$65 per mbps is a bit expensive, assholes

[dacut]

The bulk of the expense with a T-1 goes to the 'loop' charge, i.e: the money you are paying the local telco to lease two (or more with certain implementations) pairs on their plant.

The resource usage itself doesn't cost the telco that much. What you're really paying for on these two lines is the aggressive SLA.

Your T1 goes down? The telco has 4 hours to restore it before incurring penalties.

Your cable/DSL goes down? They'll dispatch a tech when convenient (for them).

Re:$65 per mbps is a bit expensive, assholes

[joeler]

Netflix is growing and the cable companies are concerned that too many of their customers will learn they can pay Netflix less than $10.00 a month and get more movies and tv streamed to their tv than the cable companies are willing to provide for twice that amount. The cable companies need to find a way to stop Netflix from stealing thier cutomers without actually saying they are after Netflix, as the FCC would not like it if the cable companies throttles back their competition in order to protect their own products.

Re:$65 per mbps is a bit expensive, assholes

[Rich0]

I'm all for a crackdown on internet service advertising. The word "unlimited" means NO LIMITS! Sure, it is impossible to truly offer that (without an expensive price tag), so don't use the word!

They should just advertise up to x GB of traffic at y mbps for z$ - pick the plan you want. Then people could compare and choose.

However, don't expect to see datacenter prices for bandwidth for residential service. At a datacenter they run in a bundle of fiber optic lines to their upstream provider (possibly in the next floor), and then run an ethernet network around a single room. The whole works is in an air conditioned building not exposed to the elements. They can charge very little for bandwidth and make a profit. The home ISP needs to maintain a wire that actually leads to the premises, they need to consolidate these lines at some intermediate point, and they need to maintain a mini-datacenter of points at all the branches. They also need to process a bill/etc.

Perhaps what would make you handy is if the bill were itemized. $5 per month would be for billing/processing. $30/month would be for line maintenance. $15/month would be for the data rate (this part of the bill would change if you opt for a better plan). A more honest breakdown might be $5/month for data and $10/month for "we're the only licensed ISP in town and we can charge whatever we want". But, we certainly won't see that... :)

Re:$65 per mbps is a bit expensive, assholes

[Braino420]

No, you already have the reduced service. You can't download at max rate 24/7. The cap just presents itself in a different way - variable service quality, timeouts, hidden QOS and throttling, etc.

This is not ok with me either, and this doesn't make it right.

That really is the crux of this. You think your service is reduced when the ISP is really telling you accurately what you already had and making an official solution to the problem instead of hiding it.

Great, just wish that had happened before the contract was signed. Not much anyone can do about it either way is there?

History. Comcast has increased their bandwidth every year.

I'm so glad you live in an area where there has been progress, now only if it was like that everywhere. It doesn't even mean they have increased their bandwidth, maybe they are just more willing to oversell. Also, these things we're talking about weren't issues years ago, and the issues are going to get worse. People are going to want to use the internet for more things, like they are using it for more things than they were years ago.

No, you are ignoring my reasoning and resorting to ad hominem attacks. It comes down to this: either accept throttling and secret ISP code that drops packets -- or accept a cap. Your choice. I'll take the cap. It's fair, measurable, and network neutral. The only people who lose-out with the caps is the pirates running FTP sites all day.

You didn't bring up this reasoning at all in your previous posts, so I couldn't have ignored it. These are two different issues you are bringing up. ISPs throttling customers and dropping packets is bad ALSO. I don't want to accept the lesser of two evils, I don't want either one of them! Do you believe they have all of sudden stopped throttling customers and dropping packets? I sure don't. Now it seems it's going to get worst because they have they seemed to have teamed up with the RIAA. Not only this, but ISPs, like Comcast, also control other, competing, "entertainment" sources. There is a conflict of interest which will most likely also result in the throttling of connections.

P.S. As you pointed out, the government only paid for broadband at schools. The government did not pay anyone to give you broadband at your home. The old "the ISPs got government money, so I want infinite bandwidth and no caps" argument isn't reality.

I never said infinite bandwidth or even no caps, really. I just want what many other countries citizens have. We'll see what happens with the current bailout. If the ISPs aren't capable of doing these things themselves, and the free market isn't going to make them, then the government may need to step in to regulate. It's that or we keep playing these blame games and trying to divide up a shrinking bandwidth pool.

Re:$65 per mbps is a bit expensive, assholes

[Migraineman]

It's one example, and I did note that it's an inefficient proposition. I've got an rsync cron backup scheduled to an off-site server, as well as the local external-drive dump capability. I'm quite capable of managing my bandwidth usage.

My father, my siblings, and most folks I know are not. They purchased an "unlimited" bandwidth package, mostly due to salesmanship. They think that backing up their hard drive to their GMail account is a great idea. My brother has a HTPC in his living room, and it's constantly pulling down files from his Rhapsody and NetFlix accounts. Their usage patterns differ strongly from mine (and apparently yours.) Why is their behavior wrong? Last time I checked, nobody wanted less bandwidth on their internet connection. I value my time, and higher bandwidth is a good thing.

New 60Mbps service

[Panseh]

But if they're lucky, customers will be able to hit that cap quickly.

This refers to the 60Mbps service being offered. However, the summary itself says it will have no cap.

Does Charter offer their customers anyway to check on their bandwidth usage? If not, do they intend to release those tools?

Re:New 60Mbps service

[nabsltd]

But if they're lucky, customers will be able to hit that cap quickly.

This refers to the 60Mbps service being offered. However, the summary itself says it will have no cap.

Still, at 15Mpbs, you can hit the 100GB cap for that service level in just 14 hours.

For the 25Mbps service, you hit the 250GB cap in 22 hours. Or, as others have pointed out, the 250GB cap allows you to average 760514 bits per second (about 750Kbps). If you download something that takes just 2 minutes at 25Mbps, that means you essentially can't use your connection at all for the next hour to bring you back to the average.

If you can't actually get the quoted max speed (which is usually the case), this helps a bit, but then you still end up in the situation of paying for more than they can possibly deliver.

Re:New 60Mbps service

[BlueStrat]

Does Charter offer their customers anyway to check on their bandwidth usage? If not, do they intend to release those tools?

Not that I'm aware of as a customer, and probably not.

Why should they? It would cost them money. It would also emphasize the caps in the publics' perceptions. They'll just slam the poor customer (like me, possibly, if my usage grows...having the bad luck to live where Charter is the local government-mandated monopoly) and/or simply cut them off.

They really don't want customers that actually use the connection anyway. They only want the "surf the web, get email" types. Like with the telcos back in the day, having a government-enforced monopoly means they can simply tell customers, as the famous line by Lily Tomlin in Laugh-Ins' "Telephone Operator Sketches" went; "We don't care. We don't have to. We're the s/Phone Company/ISP.".

Off-topic, sort of, but funny and rather prescient for the '60s considering recent privacy concerns re: ISPs/telecoms; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9e3dTOJi0o

Cheers!

Strat

Wow, they are lucky.

[elij]

Where I live in Canada, my only high speed option is the dreadlord Rogers Cable. MY monthly limit? 95GB, and that's with their most expensive (re: 54.95 monthly) service. Granted, I can go over but I'm charged a rather whopping 2.00 for every 1GB I'm over. I'd love to see other options but I'm SoL where I live.

Re:Wow, they are lucky.

[Pope]

Eh, whatever. I've got the Extreme ROgers package, and don't remember the last time I even went above 50% of my mothly usage.

Re:Wow, they are lucky.

[omkhar]

So because you don't use anything near your usage cap, no one else will?

Re:Wow, they are lucky.

[Anonymous Coward]

've got the Extreme ROgers package

Does that mean you get unlimited gay porn?

Seriously, "good enough for me" is a crappy argument. 100GB per month is not a massive amount. For fuck's sake, this is Slashdot. I can think of plenty of (legal) ways to chew up a lot of bandwidth.

Re:Wow, they are lucky.

[Jester998]

The Rogers overage charges stop at $25. So whether you use 150GB or 1TB per month, your bill will only be $54.95 + $25.00 + taxes.

My bandwidth is regularly several hundred gigs a month on Rogers Extreme. I've done 1TB+ in a month before.

Re:Wow, they are lucky.

[Cathoderoytube]

Rogers may not be your only option. I was previously under the impression that either Bell or Rogers were my only options for internet. Then I found out about Teksavvy, and switched over to them. Significantly less bullshit, and WAY WAY WAY cheaper.
Before I was getting nailed with $70-$80 bills every month from Bell and they'd just put 'bandwidth usage' with the added cost of all the gigs I went over my 50 gig limit (not being terribly specific in that regard mind you). Plus the bastards were throttling my connection.

Nice thing with Teksavvy is they have an unlimited bandwidth option and it's cheaper than Rogers.

http://www.teksavvy.com/

Re:Wow, they are lucky.

[Anonymous Coward]

Plus the bastards were throttling my connection.

You're right about teksavvy being great for their terms of service, but keep in mind they're still under the bell network heirarchy, so any throttling or shaping after the teksavvy->bell demarc will still impact you. I'm pretty sure they managed to get Bell to stop shaping their pipes, but i dont remember for sure so you might want to double check if that part is actually correct.

Doing the math...

[CannonballHead]

For the 15-25Mbps folks, that's ~28hrs of solid downloading at 20Mbps. Hopefully I did the math right.

Re:Doing the math...

[Mastadex]

'More than 99% of our customers will not be affected by our updated policy, as they consume far less bandwidth than the threshold allows'

If the VAST majority of the users use less then the cap, whats the point of having a cap anyway? 1% of users going over won't effect anything.

Re:Doing the math...

[Anonymous Coward]

.99 x 1Gb = .99 .01 x 100GB = 1 --half overall bandwidth!

It does matter. If you can cut that 1% to 50Gb you just saved 25% of your overall bandwidth.

I know this math stuff is difficult.

Re:Doing the math...

[Mastadex]

Moreover, the people that want to download a ton of stuff, will opt for the connection with the higher Cap. If the point of the cap is to curb overzealous downloading, why would you want to give the highest bandwidth allotment to the people that want to download the most. This is counter to the purpose of caps, IMO.

Re:Doing the math...

[AndersOSU]

The 1% of people use way more than 1% of the bandwidth.

Re:Doing the math...

[dougisfunny]

1: They don't want to lose customers.
2: They want to charge customers as much as possible.
3: 60Mbps looks attractive, and so does uncapped downloading, making high downloaders want to pay more for what they already have, since Charter will still be highly unlikely to deliver 60Mbps.

Re:Doing the math...

[SydShamino]

I think the point of the cap is to extract more money from the people who use more of the bandwidth.

If you're an optimist, Charter will use the extra money and the list of people willing to pay for more bandwidth as a guide for where to roll out additional fiber.

If you're a pessimist, Charter just wants to extract more money from the people least likely to switch to their only alternative - dial-up.

Re:Doing the math...

[GooberToo]

This is counter to the purpose of caps, IMO.

Not really because now they have the added revenue to cover the bandwidth used by these customers. This means they are paying for their share of bandwidth allocation; as opposed to the typical user who was otherwise subsidizing these would-be cap users.

Same old song and dance...

[Anonymous Coward]

It'll be interesting to see how long this lasts. The same type of thing happened back when Netscrape came out (RIP Gopher you'll be missed, *sniff*); pictures could be embedded in web browsers. Remember the jpg vs gif debates? We used to have a partial t1, now we play with partial gig 10 years later.

I'm guessing history will repeat itself, and while some companies will have limits, others wont, and they will advertise that way. From the article, this shouldn't bother anything serious about their downloads.

(BTW, this is mfh posting as AC to avoid the unnecessary karmic repercussions of that most nasty, tasty kind of wicked, strange brew and such.)

Re:Same old song and dance...

[Shakrai]

and while some companies will have limits, others wont, and they will advertise that way

Or they'll just all collude in the manner that the wireless companies (SMS pricing) have and not bother to actually compete with one another.

Wait a minute?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ketzer confirms. 'More than 99% of our customers will not be affected by our updated policy, as they consume far less bandwidth than the threshold allows,' he says.

So less than 1% will be affected by the cap. Then why have the cap in the first place? Those "less than 1%" uses so much today that it affects 100% of their customers? And if those "less than 1%" already using more than 250GB a month as it is, means that it will still "affect" those "more than 99%" users. This is a load of BS.

Re:Wait a minute?

[residieu]

Less than 1% of their users will be affected by the cap, but they realized they can probably upsell a good portion of those users to the non-capped service.

Re:Wait a minute?

[Overzeetop]

The part you're missing is that 1% their subscribers are probably using 20-40% of their bandwidth. The are looking to maximize the amount of people on their network, and they see that top 1% as using a significantly disproportionate amount.

I'd like to get all worked up about this, but even if I were customer I'd be hard pressed to download 250GB in a month. I could do all the filesharing I wanted to at 250GB; just put a 256k cap on the outbound torrents and you'd still have 2/3 of your cap for inbound content. I'd be happier with 15Mb service and a 250GB cap than a 3MB service (the max in my area) with no cap at all.

What happens after the cap?

[QuantumRiff]

I don't ever come close to that on my charter account, but I would hope that if I did hit the cap, instead of cutting me off, Charter would simply drop me down to 256kb/s. Painful, but still usable.

Re:What happens after the cap?

[bittmann]

I don't ever come close to that on my charter account, but I would hope that if I did hit the cap, instead of cutting me off, Charter would simply drop me down to 256kb/s. Painful, but still usable.

Ahhh...but they can't make money CHARGING you for that, can they?

Re:What happens after the cap?

[furby076]

I would hope they had a "roll-over-minutes" plan. They would see this month you went over but all the previous months you went under so no biggy. If I don't hit my cap, but I pay for up to a cap I should be prorated somehow.

The only way to sell speeds people don't need.

[jellomizer]

I use Road Runner and it is at 10mbs oddly enough that is fast enough for me and I am not at all interested in the 15mbs upgrade. 60mbs is way more then I ever need. So you put caps on the slow speeds to make people want to upgrade.

Re:The only way to sell speeds people don't need.

[CorporateSuit]

I use Road Runner and it is at 10mbs oddly enough that is fast enough for me and I am not at all interested in the 15mbs upgrade. 60mbs is way more then I ever need. So you put caps on the slow speeds to make people want to upgrade.

I prefer not to have my ISP be synonymous with both the RIAA and MPAA, therefore I choose to go offline/pirate internet rather than subscribe to Time-Warner internet for my area for the time being.

Re:The only way to sell speeds people don't need.

[Anonymous Coward]

I think that is a BS comparison. I hate it when my internet speed if slowed down because a few jerks are downloading DVDs all the time.

I am fine with the caps. I like to watch shows on hulu, but hulu has become unwatchable because of this.

Re:The only way to sell speeds people don't need.

[Big Boss]

Maybe you should be downloading. When you aren't streaming, you can tolerate periods of high latency.

Re:The only way to sell speeds people don't need.

[CorporateSuit]

I think that is a BS comparison. I hate it when my internet speed if slowed down because a few jerks are downloading DVDs all the time.

I think you misunderstood me. Time Warner is a member of the RIAA, the MPAA, and owns Road Runner.

What happens at the end of the month?

[b4dc0d3r]

I realize these are pretty high caps, but what happens at the end of the month when your heaviest users hit their caps? Isn't it going to be a stretch to say that you cap usage due to bandwidth constraints, yet because the heaviest users are not using it the available bandwidth skyrockets?

Another thought is, you buy/lease/subscribe to a line with 20mbps and that's what you expect out of your service. Is it reasonable to expect that they multiply each user by their speed and have enough bandwidth to supply all of their customers? We all seem to understand when phones get overloaded during emergencies, but if that internet doesn't come to us immediately it's suddenly bait and switch, that we can't use what we were sold?

My point is, I suppose, we are sold the connection to the ISP at a certain speed, but we are not guaranteed that it will function at that speed. If bandwidth is available, why the arbitrary cap? Shouldn't it be more like you lose priority after hitting a certain level?

Re:What happens at the end of the month?

[sssssss27]

If bandwidth is available, why the arbitrary cap? Shouldn't it be more like you lose priority after hitting a certain level?

Exactly. I have no problem with caps or even quality of service. If the ISPs actually worked with their customers then a lot of these problems they are having could go away. I wouldn't have any problems with my bit torrent packets having lower priority than someone's VOIP packets. One is far more sensitive to latency than the other. I also wouldn't mind them decreasing my uploading bandwidth during peak hours and giving me increased uploading bandwidth during non peak hours.

Re:What happens at the end of the month?

[jjhall]

I have no problem at all with QOS implemented by an ISP as long as it is fair, such as all VoIP packets getting the same priority, regardless of whether they have their own offering or not. As long as they don't prioritize their own services, I think they should still be allowed to maintain their common carrier status.

I do however have a problem with changing the upload speed. If they want to cap my download, go for it, but leave upload along. QOS in Smoothwall, Tomato, DD-WRT, and other routers is based on a constant upload bandwidth. This means in order to ensure you have proper-functioning QOS during a rate cap, you have to configure it for the capped speed at all times. You can no longer take advantage of your uncapped speed.

The best way to handle high-usage customers is to downgrade their priority once they hit a threshold. That way if my neighbors aren't using the bandwidth, I can. Why let the pipe sit there empty? When the neighbors need it, my priority goes down to make sure they see the speeds until they hit their own cap.

Since most peering arrangements are based on the percentage of traffic moving in one direction based on the other, they should be encouraging customers to be on the uploading side as it will help tip the scales in their direction and actually reduce their bandwidth expense.

Re:What happens at the end of the month?

[sssssss27]

I agree with you and I was a little ambiguous in my statement. I meant during the day you would have your set upload limit but then during the non peak hours you would have increased upload bandwidth. Right now I have no incentive to try and upload during non peak hours since my bandwidth never changes. It's similar to how cell phone companies give you free nights and weekends.

Just because you can't take advantage of it doesn't mean that I can't. This is also another situation that would help if the cable companies worked with their customers. If they set up a standard that allowed programs like Smoothwall or Tomato to find out the current upload bandwidth it could dynamically change the upload bandwidth. I imagine a good stop gap though would be to ping a server and measure the response time like almost every bit torrent client does for auto speed.

Re:What happens at the end of the month?

[MobyDisk]

what happens at the end of the month when your heaviest users hit their caps?

This is a general problem whenever you cap something at the end of a period of time. That's why salespeople push harder at the end of the month, or end of the year. Why cops give more tickets, etc.

The solution is to throttle someone based on something like "the total bandwidth over the past 30 days" instead of having a hard cut-off. So for example, if someone is downloading a lot, then their bandwidth slowly goes down. Then if they stop downloading, it slowly goes back up. Mathematically speaking, you can then apply hysteresis so that normal users are unaffected. Winds up something like this:

0-100GB/30 days: 100% speed
100-200/30 days: Linearly throttle down to 50% speed
200-250/30 days: Linearly throttle down to 0% speed

Ultimately, what they did is probably easier to implement in their billing system. And it will discourage blatent overuse of the service. They say it won't affect 99% of the people - so really, they are just trying to smack down the 1%. I don't think they care exactly how "fair" it is to those few.

Re:What happens at the end of the month?

[FunkSoulBrother]

I think everyone is ok with what happens to the phone system during emergencies/major events. But if the sound on your phone line was sorta crackly all the time, and you got "all circuits filled" messages back weekly with the excuse being "too many people are conducting phone calls" even though it was a normal Thursday with no local emergencies, you'd probably be pissed your telco didn't upgrade their equipment.

Re:What happens at the end of the month?

[eth1]

Or perhaps sell bandwidth based on Guaranteed/Burst rates.

Guaranteed = you can't over-sell this, and it has un-restricted use; 100% of your subscribers should be able to use this 100% of the time (and thus increasing this is expsensive, but most people don't need much).
Burst = any spare bandwidth is evenly allocated for burst use.

So your basic connection would have 256Kbit guaranteed and up to 20Mbit Burst.

A scheme like this would at least allow the constant-download/upload crowd to set appropriate traffic limits in their software. Unfortunately, most people probably wouldn't understand it.

Re:What happens at the end of the month?

[jjhall]

I wasn't suggesting they take anything away from you, just that they don't take away upload bandwidth at all. If they want to treat it as burst, then they need to advertise/sell it that way. Don't say "2MB up" then bury in the user agreement a clause that says "100K if you use more than 2 MB in a 5 minute period" or some such crap.

I definitely think they should offer some sort of status page that shows the current upload and download speed caps, and any aggregate totals towards any limits in place. This would be an acceptable alternative if they can't just let us get what they are charging us for and leave us alone.

Mr Ketzer

[Anonymous Coward]

Ketzer means heretic, BTW.

Am I missing something obvious?

[Anonymous Coward]

Am I missing something, or is not the obvious solution here, "Get a business account."?

Re:Am I missing something obvious?

[tepples]

Am I missing something, or is not the obvious solution here, "Get a business account."?

Does Charter even offer business accounts in residential zones?

Re:Am I missing something obvious?

[compro01]

You presume they will sell you a business account when you live in a residential area and that they won't cap the business accounts.

Though at least these guys are providing an unlimited tier.

Re:Am I missing something obvious?

[sakti]

> Does Charter even offer business accounts in residential zones?

Yes they do.

Just like slashdot

[qoncept]

If I can recall, every time I've seen a story about slashdot before today, there were 100 comments saying "They need to just have a firm cap." Now everyone is complaining about the firm cap.

The fact of the matter is, you asked for it, you got it, and arguing that 250gb a month isn't reasonable would be tough. Comcast is right - that should cover 99% of their customers, and of the 1% who "need" more bandwidth, 99% of them probably aren't using it for legitimate downloads. Anyone who needs more than that shouldn't expect to be paying what their neighbors are.

For what it's worth, I'm paying over $100 for 1mb SDSL. If I were to top it out 24 hours a day and never reboot I could possibly get to 250gb.

Re:Just like slashdot

[plague3106]

Why shouldn't they pay the same? They are paying for speed, not the amount of bandwidth they are using. Will the price drop for those with capped connections? Because after all, now that all the "higher need" users are paying more, those that doesn't use a lot should pay less, right?

Re:Just like slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

dang, that's pricey

Re:Just like slashdot

[qoncept]

You're wrong. Comcast is capping bandwidth beginning this month. They are paying for speed and bandwidth.

Re:Just like slashdot

[qoncept]

I'm not happy with my previous comment, so I'll try again. It still applies, though. If you are in the 1% of people using 100x as many resources as the next guy (and work with me here, think in generalities) why should you be paying the same price? You are either making their service worse or making it cost more for them.

See, Comcast doesn't work in a vacuum. They aren't arbitrarily setting costs and reaping in hordes of money. They price their offerings to be competetive. Even when they are the only provider in an area, since their prices are more or less identical between locations. If they need more bandwidth because one guy is using a ton more than anyone else, they have to upgrade, and to pay for that they have to raise their prices. You see it as being strong armed and dictating the market, but they are playing in the same market as you. Sure, they aren't going to find a way to save $1 a month per customer and pass the savings along to you, but if they have to upgrade something and it ends up costing $1 more per person, you can bet they will.

The fact that customers were paying for speed and not bandwidth last month is irrelevent. The few customers that mattered complained about how they wanted firm caps, and now they've got them. If you want a higher cap you pay more for it. What the hell did everyone expect? The new cap is probably as big as 90% of their customers' hard drives! At what cap would people stop complaining?

And.. If users say a cap is the way to resolve an issue where the highest users consume 50x as much bandwidth as the average user, how can you expect the cap to be anywhere near what the highest users were consuming?

Re:Just like slashdot

[mikael_j]

If I can recall, every time I've seen a story about slashdot before today, there were 100 comments saying "They need to just have a firm cap." Now everyone is complaining about the firm cap.

Every time I've commented in one of these stories I know my attitude has been that there's no need for caps, I have never had an ISP with any kind of bandwidth cap (except for my current 3G ISP that reserves the right to limit the speed of my connection if I somehow manage to transfer more than x GB in a month (I think it's 5 or 15 GB, I can't remember), this has yet to happen as I don't download large amounts of data with my cellphone).

In fact, I think most /. users oppose bandwidth caps but when choosing between "we'll cap you whenever we see fit" and "The cap is x GB per month" the latter is obviously the lesser evil.

/Mikael

Re:Just like slashdot

[Sensible Clod]

Listen, bud. The agreement we signed didn't say anything about how much we could use per month. We're paying for a dumb pipe of X megabits per second, to use as much as we like. They want to change the terms AFTER the fact. My monitor indicates that in 2008, 9 months out of 12 we exceeded 100GB, and 3 of those months we exceeded 250GB.

They are just greedy money grabbers who took billions from the federal government for upgrades, and kept it instead of upgrading. Should it surprise you that they want to make another money grab now?

Re:Just like slashdot

[Blob Pet]

"and of the 1% who "need" more bandwidth, 99% of them probably aren't using it for legitimate downloads. "

That stat may have been true a few years ago, but I strongly suspect, if it hasn't changed already, it'll be different over the next few years. Video streaming services are becoming very popular, and it's gotten to the point where many Netflix users prefer the Watch Instantly option over receiving DVDs in the mail. The bitrate for HD Netflix content on the Roku box is 3.5 Mbit/sec. Let's suppose that some people keep increasing their usage of streaming services to the point where it replaces their usage of broadcast TV. Hell, why not? Netflix and Apple TV are cheaper than standard or premium cable. Let's then consider the statistic from http://www.digitalhome.ca/content/view/3134/283/ that the average person spends about 142 hours in front of a TV per month. That means downloading over 218 GB in one month just from watching TV through a streaming service.

Re:Just like slashdot

[furby076]

I agree with you - but I would like to see 'roll-over-minutes'. If i happen togo over one month, but the previous months I did not then I should get a pass.

The positive of this - if each company advertises their rated speeds eventualyl they will lower prices or increase speeds at the same price to win over the other guy. Unless you live in areas like miney, Philadelphia, where comcast has a monopoly. Your other options are DSL or satellite which don't compete. No fiber in the foreseable future (originally due to Comcast lobbying to delay fiber installs, and now due to Verizon not installing fiber).

Re:Just like slashdot

[Blob Pet]

"They price their offerings to be competetive."

You're kidding, right? Comcast has no competition where I live, and neither do many providers around the country. There's no incentive to be competitive. Why do you think ISPs have gone so far as to sue whenever a city or town even whispers the words "municipal wifi"?

Re:Just like slashdot

[karnal]

For what it's worth, I'm paying over $100 for 1mb SDSL. If I were to top it out 24 hours a day and never reboot I could possibly get to 250gb.

Close to 24 days before you'd hit the cap. Love, Google.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=250+gigabytes+%2F+1+megabit+per+second+%3D+%3F+days&btnG=Search

Re:Just like slashdot

[AK Marc]

So you downloaded a few terrabytes of data in that year. That's about 200 DVDs worth of data. Did you download a distro a day? Watch one movie every day at DVD compression? Even at the regular compression of downloaded movies, you'd have to watch 2 more more per day to get there. You state it like you are normal. So I'm curious, what "normal" usage gets you over 250 GB for 25% of the year?

They are just greedy money grabbers who took billions from the federal government for upgrades, and kept it instead of upgrading.

Speaking of greedy bastards, what about all the loser subscribers that want 100 Mbps of dedicated content for 1/10th what it actually costs the providers to buy it themselves? They are wanting every company to sell for a loss because they demand it. Wouldn't you classify them as greedy as well?

Re:Just like slashdot

[milamber3]

Your math is just plain wrong. If you calculate usage for a 30 day month, 24/7, at full 1mbps speed then you would top out at 324 GB which is well above your 250 GB cap.

Re:Just like slashdot

[qoncept]

Read the sentence after the one you quoted, you fuck.

Re:Just like slashdot

[evanbd]

Yeah, it's almost like there are different people with different opinions here. In fact, it's like different subsets comment on different stories, and most people only comment when they want to complain rather than agree. Yeah, such hypocrisy for some users to complain about caps while others think they're a good thing. Glad you pointed that out to us, I'm sure we'll stop disagreeing now.

Re:Just like slashdot

[qoncept]

What about in February? Still, you say? Boy, do I feel like an idiot. Wait, what was my point? That wasn't it at all? Good catch, douchebag.

Re:Just like slashdot

[Sensible Clod]

Did you download a distro a day? Watch one movie every day at DVD compression?

Glossing over the fact that it doesn't matter because they agreed to sell us the bandwidth to use as we see fit (barring illegal activities, etc.), there are also uploads to factor in. We watch a lot of streaming video, and we're about to watch more. But I also regularly send large files to my friends and coworkers, and my job will soon require that I send them more often (Citrix FTW). What YOU do with YOUR bandwidth may differ.

Speaking of greedy bastards, what about all the loser subscribers that want 100 Mbps of dedicated content for 1/10th what it actually costs the providers to buy it themselves?

I won't stoop to feces-flinging, but I will point out that if ISP's offer to sell a certain thing for a certain price, they are obligated to deliver that thing at that price. If it really costs them so much, then they can't really afford to sell it for so little, can they? I guess not. Of course, Charter is in financial trouble, isn't it? Another case of over-leveraging, trying to sell what you don't have.

Re:Just like slashdot

[Glonoinha]

Be honest with us - two or three terabytes of data in a year - break that down for us. You can post anonymous coward if you like, in case someone knows who you are ... but really, be honest.

What percentages were :
Movies that you paid for / have a license for
Movies that you didn't pay for / don't have a license for
Music, legit w/ licenses
Music, no license
Linux distros
Warez
Legit software downloads
Regular interactive Internet surfing, including MMORPG traffic

Re:Just like slashdot

[Sensible Clod]

See my above comment, but basically a lot comes from streaming video, and uploading large files both fun- and work-related. In addition, my job will require me to use large streaming Citrix apps in a few days, so it will just go up from there.

Re:Just like slashdot

[Areyoukiddingme]

I haven't been keeping track of my bandwidth usage, because until today Charter left me alone. Now they're working on capping me. (And incidentally botching the job ridiculously, as my throughputs fluctuate wildly.) But to answer your question, it's trivially easy to download 200 DVDs of data in a year, and upload 3X that much. I'm a software developer, both open source and closed source, and I am certain I downloaded that much data last year downloading tools and libraries. Fifty gigs of the year went just to apt-get update; apt-get upgrade on Debian testing and Debian unstable. The rest went to subversion updates of 5 different repositories, some of which contain large binary blobs. That adds up to 100s of megabytes per day with only moderate activity. I also seed the modarchive total collection torrent, to the tune of 10 or more gigs per month. (Legally downloadable RIAA-free music.)

And that's just me. There are two other people in the house. Do you have any IDEA how much Youtube a 10 year old can consume?

And we're not even Netflix subscribers. We've discussed it a couple of times. Now we can't, without paying as much per month for Internet service as a high end digital cable subscription. Do you think that's a coincidence?

Re:Just like slashdot

[Blob Pet]

Your logic is seriously flawed, just as is your reaction to my previous post. Just because you claim Comcast's prices are "more or less" the same in different regions doesn't make the pricing "competitive." Competitive pricing suggests that there's competition that gives you a basis for comparison. There is next to no such thing in most broadband markets when communities grant official monopolies. You also should consider backing-up your claim about the Comcast pricing with some facts. I can just as easily claim that Comcast's pricing in one region is 15% more than in another region.

Re:Just like slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

Not the OP, but anyway...

Licensed movies - about 50% (HD transcodes from BD about 15GB per. Yes, I own the BD, but it's faster to download than to rip and transcode myself. And more energy efficient if you're green. I also include TV shows that are OTA broadcast (not cable channels) that I downloaded for whatever reason.)

Unlicensed movies - 10% (I look at it like renting. I buy or delete after checking it out. Most of them are crap and I watch 15min and delete. If I were allowed to return crap that I didn't like, I might not do this.)

Licensed Music - 10% (Not much music I like that I don't already have, and it's tiny compared to HD video)

Unlicensed Music - 5% (Again, renting. I think I've only found about 2 albums worth buying in the past 6 months)

Linux - 5% (Ubuntu, Mythbuntu)

Warez - 1% (I use mostly FOSS, so no warez needed)

Legit software - 9% (Mostly updates for Linux, Windows, OSX, and other legit stuff that's either FOSS or I paid for)

Interactive - 10% (websurfing, SSH, updating my website, etc..)

Obviously that's all guesswork. But I think it's about right. I do try to be a good citizen, I cap my download speeds myself during busy times of day. Evenings and weekends I slow myself down, partly because I want some bandwidth available for interactive stuff. I figure, if I'm not being a dick, my ISP has a lot less reason to be a dick to me. I'm also with a local WISP, so they are a lot more flexible than Comcrap and the like.

AC post for obvious reasons. :)

Re:Just like slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

AC Again... I wanted to add that I've topped 1TB in a MONTH. Though I'm usually more like 500GB.

Re:Just like slashdot

[GooberToo]

Look people, these types are complaints are silly. They develop a cost model which is based on the assumption reasonable users will use a reasonable amount of bandwidth. For these users it essentially is unlimited. When you have 1% of their customers using as much bandwidth as say 25% of the rest of their customers, this means they are losing money on the 1% of high use users. In fact, that means 99% of their customers are subsidizing the 1%.

If by forcing their 1% to higher fees, this allows them to properly account for and attempt to cover the expense of the 1% users. At the same time it means their profit models actually begin to make sense. Rather than having 74% of their customers profitable, they can actually make a profit on 100% of their customers.

In other words, you pay for what you use rather than free load - oh wait...that's what these users are likely doing with all that bandwidth anyways.

Re:Just like slashdot

[Braino420]

The fact of the matter is, you asked for it, you got it

This reminds me of signs I used to see all over my university campus saying, "You demanded more used books!" No body wanted used books, they wanted books cheaper and used books were typically the way to do that. I'll go along with your point that maybe some people did want some type of limit (although I don't think that is true, and I'm not sure where you got that). But, they wanted limits with different pricing options to get what is best for them. What they got were limits that were best for the ISPs, very much like how the students at my uni got used books that were best for the uni book store (which had typically gone through 6 hands and were only 10s of dollars cheaper than their brand-new counterpart).

Anyone who needs more than that shouldn't expect to be paying what their neighbors are.

Totally agree, where are those options? I can pay ~$50 a month and then the next tier up we're talking thousands of dollars for business-class broadband...

For what it's worth, I'm paying over $100 for 1mb SDSL. If I were to top it out 24 hours a day and never reboot I could possibly get to 250gb. I empathize with your situation. So, since your situation sucks, everyone else' situation should suck the same? What about improving everyone's situation?

Re:Just like slashdot

[TrancePhreak]

With a 250GB cap per month, you would need to download 8.3GB every day for 30 days. Those 100s of MB per day are still within the cap.

Re:Just like slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

If your job requires more bandwidth you should be using a business connection not a residential one.

Re:Just like slashdot

[TrancePhreak]

I guess you haven't priced DSL in the same area as Comcast, ever. These markets overlap very often, and you get exactly what you'd think. Higher price, but higher speed. In some places, much higher speeds.

Re:Just like slashdot

[TrancePhreak]

There aren't that many HD streams on Netflix, sadly. You'd run out of HD things to watch pretty quick, unless you like to watch the same thing over and over. Even if you were able to watch your full cap on just HD, it would be 6.7 days worth of content in a 30/31 day period. That's 1/5th of the total time of the month watching something in HD.

Re:Just like slashdot

[AK Marc]

I won't stoop to feces-flinging, but I will point out that if ISP's offer to sell a certain thing for a certain price, they are obligated to deliver that thing at that price. If it really costs them so much, then they can't really afford to sell it for so little, can they?

There are only three choices. They sell it and oversubscribe. They sell it and meter it. They sell it for cost plus. I think the first makes the most sense. Not everyone is on all the time. Not everyone is filling the pipe all the time. But then, you will end up hitting the max every once in a while. Do that just once, and you'll be bitching about how the didn't give you what you paid for. Option 2 is obvious, it's the one this article is about. Option three is the one that everyone ignores. You *always* have the option of getting it. No residential customers get it. It's too expensive. So, of the three choices, all are undesirable to you. You want option 3 for less than their cost. That's all you'll be happy with, if someone else sells you something for a loss. Well, it's not going to happen. You'll get number 1. When assholes like you whine endlessly about how they paid for "unlimited" and when they do 60 Mbps for 700+ hours straight and didn't get all 60 Mbps for 30 minutes in there at a congested time, they switch to number 2, and you bitch even louder.

ISPs offer "residential service" for a price. If they are smart, they use words like "best effort" in there. If they did, then you are the idiot for not reading the TOS. A "best effort" system with an oversubscription ratio of 5 to 1 should give a great experience. If you went to 20 to 1 and had a small amount of prioritization (like the one talking about identifying drop-friendly protocols and non-drop-friendly protocols and trying to drop the drop-friendly only) then you should do fine as well. How would you like them to handle it? If you were an ISP, what would you do?

Re:Just like slashdot

[AK Marc]

I'm a software developer,

Ah, so you are one of the people buying a residential service to run a business over and complaining how it doesn't fit your needs. Got it. Now go buy an unlimited service that has "business" in the name of the service and tell me how that works for you.

Re:Just like slashdot

[Areyoukiddingme]

Ah, so you are one of the people buying a residential service to run a business over and complaining how it doesn't fit your needs. Got it. Now go buy an unlimited service that has "business" in the name of the service and tell me how that works for you.

Which part of open source do you not understand? I haven't made a dime off of my open source software, ever. Nor do I expect to. My closed source work is unpublished, so it doesn't even count. So you're saying I should have to pay 2-3X the normal monthly fee for the privilege of working on software I'm giving away for free? Hello Microsoft/<insert closed source behemoth corporation here> shill.

Re:Just like slashdot

[Sensible Clod]

There are only three choices. They sell it and oversubscribe. They sell it and meter it. They sell it for cost plus.

Option 4: all of the above. They ALWAYS sell it for cost plus, or they wouldn't be able to afford selling it at all. They ALWAYS oversubscribe. They are NOW starting to meter it.

When assholes like you whine endlessly about how they paid for "unlimited" and when they do 60 Mbps for 700+ hours straight and didn't get all 60 Mbps for 30 minutes in there at a congested time

You need to read my first comment again, if you read it the first time. I'm not complaining about speed. I'm talking about being charged LOTS extra for something that has been allowed all along. If they wanted to throttle, that would be stupid, too, but at least I wouldn't have to pay for inadvertently crossing an invisible line.

Re:Just like slashdot

[AK Marc]

I'm stating that you aren't using it as a residential service. Period. Take whatever else from that you wish. That you are using a residential service and complaining that when you are doing non-residential things on it you would have trouble with such a residential service cap does not indicate that, for a residential service, the cap is too low or that caps are bad. To use your non-residential use as a benchmark of residential use is absurd. That you aren't being paid for it doesn't make it a "residential" application. Someone that "uses" all the contend they download and doesn't download only HD TV will never hit the cap. Someone that downloads something huge, makes small changes then uploads it is moving lots they didn't "use." But as long as your content is 2 Mbps or less, you'll never it the cap. If your use is 5 Mbps but you are only using it after work/school and half-time on the weekends, you'll never hit the cap. The cap is huge. The cap is hard to get to. Sure, on Slashdot there are a lot of people that would hit it. But those are the people that Charter (or Comcast or SBC or Time Warner) would love to lose as customers. Someone running 250 GB per month is probably using more bandwidth than their fees cover buying.

Re:Just like slashdot

[AK Marc]

Option 4: all of the above. They ALWAYS sell it for cost plus, or they wouldn't be able to afford selling it at all.

That's not true. They sell as cost plus over some assigned cost, but the cost of a 1 Mbps residential service is not 1 Mbps. They will assign it some "cost" that would be closer to 100 kbps. They will then mark it up. That's different from the point I was making about selling it as cost plus for the entire bandwidth.

I'm not complaining about speed. I'm talking about being charged LOTS extra for something that has been allowed all along.

Was allowed. Now isn't. The line is clear and high. Their costs have increased (to cover the cost of the top 1% of users) and so, they are making a new pricing structure to stop subsidizing the top 1% of users. I think the other 99% should be happy. That 1% is over-represented on a tech web site, but go to the local AARP meeting and you'd hear noting but good things about punishing those over-using whipersnappers.

Re:Just like slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like you're just pissed about your crappy overpriced connection. Did you notice that this article is about a 100gb cap? Your ISP sounds so shitty they're likely to cap you at 10gb. Will you be happy then?

Re:Just like slashdot

[Sensible Clod]

They sell as cost plus over some assigned cost, but the cost of a 1 Mbps residential service is not 1 Mbps. They will assign it some "cost" that would be closer to 100 kbps. They will then mark it up. That's different from the point I was making about selling it as cost plus for the entire bandwidth.

So, instead of taking a fixed markup, say, 80%, over what the bandwidth REALLY costs them, they oversubscribe by (in your example) 10:1 and rake in 800% of what the bandwidth costs them? Sounds like you're making my point for me. Or are we talking about something completely different?

I'm not complaining about speed. I'm talking about being charged LOTS extra for something that has been allowed all along.

Was allowed. Now isn't. The line is clear and high.

You mean to tell me that all of their overleveraging has come back to bite them in the butt and that their response is to make threats instead of fix the problem??? Inconceivable!!! </sarcasm>

Their costs have increased (to cover the cost of the top 1% of users) and so, they are making a new pricing structure to stop subsidizing the top 1% of users. I think the other 99% should be happy. That 1% is over-represented on a tech web site, but go to the local AARP meeting and you'd hear noting but good things about punishing those over-using whipersnappers.

You make an interesting point about the demographics, but consider this: why do the 15-25 mbps customers (Disclaimer: we have 16 mbps), those who are more likely to download MORE, get a larger cap if they're so terribly disruptive? Why do the 60 mbps customers get ZERO cap?

That exposes the real motive of this decision: put pressure on everybody to move up a tier so Charter can increase profits this quarter without actually doing anything. All because they didn't upgrade their networks 10 years ago when they got free handouts from the government to upgrade.

Re:Just like slashdot

[plasmacutter]

" Now everyone is complaining about the firm cap.

The fact of the matter is, you asked for it, you got it, and arguing that 250gb a month isn't reasonable would be tough. Comcast is right - that should cover 99% of their customers, and of the 1% who "need" more bandwidth, 99% of them probably aren't using it for legitimate downloads. Anyone who needs .

Imagine if this same philosophy were applied at the time of dialup.

You'd never have high resolution image boards, or youtube, or open source news, etc etc etc.

Now everyone is browsing youtube. The obama inauguration speech was 120 megs on youtube for just a couple minutes, and most households have more than one member.

Those who do live in nations where caps were put in place when "reasonable persons" were using 4 and 5 gigs a month are now unable to download political activism videos and have to decide between upgrading their world of warcraft or actually playing it that month.

Hard caps are the wrong way to go, and don't directly deal with the issue of congestion. They are, in a word, fraud.

Re:Just like slashdot

[Rich0]

Most likely that agreement indicated that it could be modified at any time, given notice and a decision to keep your service would constitute an acceptance of the new terms.

However, if you're under some kind of contract with an obligated duration of service you can certainly get out of it if they change the terms. If you signed on for some 2-year deal and they change the deal after 12 months you can just tell them you want to be converted to a monthly contract or keep your current terms. If they give you a hard time mention the PUC and class action lawsuits. They'd never stand a chance if they tried to pull a stunt like that.

The same applies to cell phones and any other kind of lock-in deal. The agreement cannot be modified unilaterally without breaking the obligatory duration of service.

Re:Just like slashdot

[plague3106]

That's part of my point; they're changing people's service after they've already signed up. Sounds like a bait and switch to me. I'm just glad I have actual competition (by way of city project) in my area, and am not paying those bloodsucking assholes another cent.

Re:Just like slashdot

[plague3106]

Moron. He's not using it for business purposes. He has no company, he's not taking profit or loss. He's working on his hobby. That's residential use. Business use would be some venture that is making him money (or attempting to). Being a software developer does not automatically mean he's using his connection for business reasons. Ask the IRS if you don't believe me.

Someone running 250 GB per month is probably using more bandwidth than their fees cover buying.

Well I thought the whole idea was that it averaged out, from all the people paying for that same bandwidth but not really using it at all.

Re:Just like slashdot

[mikael_j]

There are plenty of unlimited business options, it's just that they cost a shitload even if it's the exact same service as the residential DSL, and if you buy a "real" unlimited connection for your business then it'll cost loads. I know the ISP I'm using has several tiers for connections; "Residential" (dynamic IP, one IP-address), "Business Light" (which is residential but for businesses), "Business" (Optional static IP), "Business Pro" (You get your own subnet and a real SLA).

/Mikael

Re:Just like slashdot

[AK Marc]

So, instead of taking a fixed markup, say, 80%, over what the bandwidth REALLY costs them, they oversubscribe by (in your example) 10:1 and rake in 800% of what the bandwidth costs them?

No.

Sounds like you're making my point for me. Or are we talking about something completely different?

Cost plus. Do they take the "cost" of what they sell and mark it up? They do not do that. They sell it for less than it costs them. But they aren't selling at a loss because they presume it won't be 100% consumed and they can leverage that for their profit. That's not cost-plus, that's selling for a loss and making it up with over-subscription. It isn't "cost plus" when they are selling it for a loss.

You make an interesting point about the demographics, but consider this: why do the 15-25 mbps customers (Disclaimer: we have 16 mbps), those who are more likely to download MORE, get a larger cap if they're so terribly disruptive?

Because they pay more, they get more. "Bandwidth" is free. Downloads are not. If I sell you a 100 Tbps connection and you never use it, I don't have any costs to support you. It's only if you use it that I have costs.

Why do the 60 mbps customers get ZERO cap?

Because they pay enough more that it's covered (still under the expectation that it won't be used 100% of the time).

That exposes the real motive of this decision: put pressure on everybody to move up a tier so Charter can increase profits this quarter without actually doing anything.

If you say so.

Re:Just like slashdot

[qoncept]

If I thought it was worthwhile, sure, I'd do that.

Re:Just like slashdot

[AK Marc]

Moron. He's not using it for business purposes. He has no company, he's not taking profit or loss. He's working on his hobby.

His hobby is working on something that is indistinguishable from numerous businesses doing the same thing. Just because you aren't getting paid for it doesn't make it "residential."

Well I thought the whole idea was that it averaged out, from all the people paying for that same bandwidth but not really using it at all.

Yeah, but you have to have some "average" number you are aiming for. If the users don't hit it, you can charge them more or cap them. Capping them affects fewer and results in the same profit. Would you prefer that prices increase for everyone to subsidize the heavy users? Oh yeah, since you are a heavy user, you want the cheap connection they are losing money providing rather than having the heavy users pay a heavier cost.

Re:Just like slashdot

[plague3106]

His hobby is working on something that is indistinguishable from numerous businesses doing the same thing. Just because you aren't getting paid for it doesn't make it "residential."

That describes just about anything on the internet. God damn you are stupid. I guess anyone uploading video of their cat to a website is also using their connection for business purposes.

Yeah, but you have to have some "average" number you are aiming for. If the users don't hit it, you can charge them more or cap them. Capping them affects fewer and results in the same profit.

Capping or charging more is a way to squeeze more profit out of customers. Remember the idea is that the higher load users are using the bandwidth the 100s of almost no-load users AREN'T using. That's the point. Capping or charging more is double dipping.

Would you prefer that prices increase for everyone to subsidize the heavy users?

The prices don't have to increase for anyone; the people paying for a connection they aren't using at all are already subsidizing the heavy users. Nice false dilemma.

Oh yeah, since you are a heavy user, you want the cheap connection they are losing money providing rather than having the heavy users pay a heavier cost.

Ass. I'm one that rarely uses my connection. I spend more time out of my house than I do in it. And for the record, if it's Comcast we're talking about, yea, I want them to bankrupt. I'm really glad my city came to it's senses and built its own fiber optic network, with reasonable prices for reasonable speed... instead of a crap business plan that purposefully oversells the bandwidth it has.

Re:Just like slashdot

[AK Marc]

God damn you are stupid.

Why, because your "logic" couldn't convince anyone you are right? Perhaps you should try defending your statements, rather than just attacking all the people that successfully show that they are wrong.

Re:Just like slashdot

[plague3106]

No, because you're stupid. I defended my statements, and there seem to be a lot more people arguing my point of view than yours right now.

I think you know where your argument breaks down.. because you quoted one line where I insulted you, and completely ignored the rest of my post where I take down your argument. When people have no valid point, they often focus on a copout like you did.

Re:Just like slashdot

[AK Marc]

I defended my statements, and there seem to be a lot more people arguing my point of view than yours right now.

Oooh. And there are more people in the US arguing that Christianity is the One True Religion. Does that make it true? How about if you were to ask the same question in Indonesia? There, the Muslims outnumber all others. Just because you are taking the popular line doesn't mean a thing.

I think you know where your argument breaks down.

Yeah, where you draw the line for "residential use" is when someone is paid for performing that act. Where I draw the line for "residential use" is where it is no longer residential use. Your opinion differs with mine, so you call me names and claim that you are more right because more people agree with you. You can't use logic to defend your statement because there is no logic that will make professional software development (even if done as a hobby) a "residential use." It may be non-business use, and you are whining like a little bitch because my recommendation for non-residential use was to get the business package and see if that addresses his issues. But just because the provider doesn't sell a "more than residential but not quite business" package doesn't mean that isn't exactly what he is doing, and that the business package may be more approriate than non-residential use on a residential line.

I never stated it was business use. You have implied that I have, then bashed me for it. Professional software development is not "residential" use. Uploading cat pictures is. Hosting cat pictures on a server and selling advertising on that server is not. My argument doesn't break down. It's consistent. It is just that your opinion differs from mine, so you have to pretend to be a big man and bash me for having a different opinion. Good for you. Do you feel better?

Re:Just like slashdot

[plague3106]

Oooh. And there are more people in the US arguing that Christianity is the One True Religion. Does that make it true? How about if you were to ask the same question in Indonesia? There, the Muslims outnumber all others. Just because you are taking the popular line doesn't mean a thing.

Thanks for the strawman. Oh, and when it comes to something like that, what the majority of people expect is fair and right is all that matters.

Yeah, where you draw the line for "residential use" is when someone is paid for performing that act. Where I draw the line for "residential use" is where it is no longer residential use. Your opinion differs with mine, so you call me names and claim that you are more right because more people agree with you. You can't use logic to defend your statement because there is no logic that will make professional software development (even if done as a hobby) a "residential use." It may be non-business use, and you are whining like a little bitch because my recommendation for non-residential use was to get the business package and see if that addresses his issues. But just because the provider doesn't sell a "more than residential but not quite business" package doesn't mean that isn't exactly what he is doing, and that the business package may be more approriate than non-residential use on a residential line.

I call you names because you're a moron that thinks YOU define what "residential use" means. Commerical use means you're using it as part of your process to make money. Either's either residental or commercial. Residental use might very well and does include things that take a lot of bandwidth. Or is downloading an ISO somehow different than streaming an HD movie? In other words, you're a tool that believes business can do whatever they want, including pulling a bait and switch scheme.

I never stated it was business use. You have implied that I have, then bashed me for it. Professional software development is not "residential" use. Uploading cat pictures is. Hosting cat pictures on a server and selling advertising on that server is not. My argument doesn't break down. It's consistent. It is just that your opinion differs from mine, so you have to pretend to be a big man and bash me for having a different opinion. Good for you. Do you feel better?

No, you're argument is moronic, because not all software development is "professional." It's pretty clear there's hobbist programmers out there too.

And yes, pointing out morons like you does make me feel better. Now go cry in a corner bitch.

Re:Just like slashdot

[AK Marc]

Either's either residental or commercial.

False dichotomy. You lose.

Re:Just like slashdot

[plague3106]

Idiot. There's only two classes of service Charter provides: residental or commercial. You lose, moron.

Re:Just like slashdot

[AK Marc]

There's only two classes of service Charter provides: residental or commercial.

Read up on what I said before. I stated that just because something isn't commercial doesn't mean it is therefore residential. I specifically stated that just because it's either/or for what you order from Charter, that doesn't affect what the definition of "residential" is. And, since his use isn't residential (not by my definition, and since he says he doesn't fit in Charter's definition of residential either, so everyone is agreed except you that the use doesn't fit the residential pattern), it isn't residential. That doesn't mean it is therefore commercial. But with Charter, that's the only other choice. So for non-residential service, he should pick commercial. Not because his use is commercial (and you are a fucking liar for implying I ever said such a thing when I've explicitly denied it on many occasions), but because it is non-residential.

Re:Just like slashdot

[plague3106]

That's how Charter sees it though.. either you get a commercial or residental line. If it's not commercial or residental, then what kind of use would you call it then?

The OP said he downloaded more on his residental plan than the normal residental user... but that doesn't mean he's not a residental user. It means he's a private home owner not using the connection to make money.. which is the same definition Charter has, by the way. Just because he uses it alot more doesn't mean he should be forced to a more expensive connection.

Charter provided it, he used it. They gambled people would pay for a connection and not use it.. and now they are pissed that people are using what they paid for. This is a bait and switch as far as I'm concerned.

Oh, goodie

[andytrevino]

Looks like the perfect time to switch to DSL...

Re:Oh, goodie

[stonedcat]

Yea because no DSL provider is going to cap their service and DSL is so much more reliable th.... fuck it no i can't even finish that statement with a straight face.

Re:Oh, goodie

[andytrevino]

As a longtime Charter customer in Wisconsin, yes, the DSL service (particularly TDS) is both more reliable and not capping its service.

Better service

[Fragasaurus]

ISPs don't have enough competition. Will someone tell me why none of these ISP companies setup infrastructure throughout the entire U.S. and overthrow the competition. Why is there always only 1 or 2 major ISPs in certain areas? I'm sure one of them could offer way better service than what is given right now throughout the U.S. and still make a large profit.

Re:Better service

[Anonymous Coward]

Government created monopolies is why there are only 1 or 2 major ISPs in an area.

Re:Better service

[tepples]

Will someone tell me why none of these ISP companies setup infrastructure throughout the entire U.S. and overthrow the competition.

Because Verizon controls the FiOS last mile and the designated incumbent cable company controls the DOCSIS last mile. How do you expect one of these national ISPs to negotiate with non-subscribers to pull cable over their land to reach subscribers?

Re:Better service

[koutbo6]

could wimax be the solution?

Re:Better service

[CaptCovert]

And every city to bring it up has gotten lawyers shoved in their face by the ISP to protect it's monopoly.

Reminds me of the banking industry...

[RyanFenton]

Overselling representations of value, in the hope that they can make maximum use of the underutilized parts of the resources available. That transforms any regular customer use of those resources a "threat" to their viability as a business. So, at some point, like with a ponzi/pyramid scheme, demand drives the overselling on that resource to reach a point where the whole system starts to unravel. As this starts to happen, those running the system will turn to threats, excuses, and sudden changes in policy to try to make the process run that one last cycle, or try to sell the whole mess to someone else before the illusion is broken.

Here though, because the output is in terms of a constant stream of use, rather than monetary return, the provider can just kick out those who would complain about unfullfilled promises, freeing up resources to make more carefully worded promises they can't actually fulfill. All the blame goes away with the dropped customer, and benefit to those running the system.

That's the nature of selling everything as a 'service' when you have a relative monopoly - you can oversell as much as you want, then pick and choose who are the easiest customers to serve with limited resources.

Ryan Fenton

Looks like good news to me

[SuperKendall]

For those that want it, there is a price you get unlimited bandwidth use. What's wrong with that? As long as you are aware of what you are getting for the price you pay (as opposed to claims of unlimited that are not) I have no beef with the structure they are setting up.

Re:Looks like good news to me

[koutbo6]

might this qualify as price gauging? They have been offering the services for a long time now without caps. So they cant claim they can't maintain it. I wouldn't have a problem with it if they instead offered an alternative package wit caps, with a lowered price, to entice people to switch instead of just flipping the switch on current subscribers. If they took their cue from wireless carriers, then I think they will charge users on usage beyond the cap.

Re:Looks like good news to me

[Ironica]

might this qualify as price gauging?

If they were selling water or batteries after an earthquake, yeah.

They have been offering the services for a long time now without caps. So they cant claim they can't maintain it.

What, business plans can't change? What if they're being charged more by their upstream providers? What if they had a contract with a provider which expired, and now they're having to renegotiate? And then there's always the possibility that they've realized their product was undervalued, and they're correcting that. I realize Jamba Juice writes a long letter of explanation and apology every time they raise their prices, but that's not necessarily required by all businesses.

Re:Looks like good news to me

[koutbo6]

they can't afford it? How would you explain then having to pay a premium if you dont get TV service? even though there is more cost to them with TV services? why would they continue to market higher bandwidth packages if they can't afford bandwidth from uplink?
I sure would like to change my cable provider, but I couldn't find anyone here besides charter. Seems to me like price gauging.
I am all for agility and changing business plans, but it shouldn't be at the expense of the customer. If you set a certain expectation from the customer and have a contract with him, then see it through, don't flip the switch on him. After all, they don't pay per glass like jamba juice.
The way I see it, they would like to treat their customers like wireless carriers and are taking us slowly there.

Re:Looks like good news to me

[koutbo6]

Which reminds me, changing business plans doesn't necessarily mean screwing your customer. There's the uplink providers, and content provider (like hulu and netflix) in the value chain whom they can work deals with to make everyone more profitable without changing cost on customer.
Lets face it, this is not the time to try and get more from the customer. They could negotiate lower prices with uplink providers, or better yet, why not negotiate with hulu and netflix to have their servers hosted more closer to the user!. this way everyone would be happy, and they don't have to pay the uplink providers for extra bandwidth!

Re:Looks like good news to me

[Ironica]

they can't afford it?

Did I say that? I didn't say that. I said that it's routine for businesses to change their prices when their costs change, and cited a couple of examples of things that can affect their costs. Their job is to make money, not to provide you with the maximum amount of service for the minimum price.

How would you explain then having to pay a premium if you dont get TV service?

Market forces.

why would they continue to market higher bandwidth packages if they can't afford bandwidth from uplink?

They won't. Huh?

I sure would like to change my cable provider, but I couldn't find anyone here besides charter. Seems to me like price gauging.

Actually, price gauging would be monitoring prices. Price gouging, on the other hand, is a felony offense in some regions during civil emergencies, or more informally applied to anticompetitive practices (which may be more accurately termed price-fixing).

And they're not raising their prices, nor are they lowering the amount of service delivered at that price to the vast majority of their clients. They're requiring that a small minority of clients who are using their services in a manner that far exceeds the norm to upgrade to a more expensive level of service to continue that level of usage. If that's price gouging, then so are most utility pricing structures, which charge you a higher rate for usage above a threshold amount (usually based on average usage or on prior year usage).

I am all for agility and changing business plans, but it shouldn't be at the expense of the customer.

Uhhhh... if the customer is the source of revenue, then it is ALWAYS at the expense of the customer. Who exactly do you expect to pay for things?

 

If you set a certain expectation from the customer and have a contract with him, then see it through, don't flip the switch on him. After all, they don't pay per glass like jamba juice.

If you have a contract with your cable company, they cannot change terms on you until the contract expires. Similarly, *you* cannot disconnect service without penalty until expiration of that contract. OTOH, if you pay monthly for service, and can terminate anytime with minimal notice (in my experience, cable services can be terminated with as little as a few hours' notice, and rarely more than a few days), you DO NOT have a contract with them, and they, likewise, can change your service terms. You can then either accept the new terms or terminate service.

The way I see it, they would like to treat their customers like wireless carriers and are taking us slowly there.

Wireless carriers usually lock their clients into one- or two-year contracts. If the client wishes to terminate service before the expiration of the contract, they will pay a hefty penalty. OTOH, their rates are fixed for the term of the contract. It sounds like you would prefer that system, so I'm not sure why you'd be upset to see cable service move in that direction. But then... it doesn't sound like it is anyway.

Re:Looks like good news to me

[broen]

I totally agree. I mean, these caps don't apply to existing customers, who Charter already agreed would get unlimited service, so what's the problem?

Re:Looks like good news to me

[Hokie06]

um where does TFA say that? It sounds like its for new and existing customers.

I find it funny

[Propaganda13]

I find it funny that ISPs are switching to tiered plans while cell phone companies are switching to all you can eat plans. While I'm not a fan of tiered plans, I do prefer that they have clearly defined limits and consequences and the ability to check current usage. Currently, Charter does not, but then again this is a leak.

Just don't make it Comcastic.

Re:I find it funny

[CambodiaSam]

Something tells me that if I tether my cell phone to my laptop and let it run continuously for a month, that a rep from my cell phone company will call to tell me that the "Unlimited Data Plan" is not really Unlimited when put to the test. I'm sure the same goes if I were to place a call and leave it up like some kind of intercom.

I'm not saying it's right or wrong, just a feeling that cell phone technology is somewhat self limiting in the "unlimited" space. People just aren't in too many situations where it will happen.

Of course, that data scenario probably does happen on occasion with road warriors.

Re:I find it funny

[Anonymous Coward]

I do prefer that they have clearly defined limits and consequences...

There always has been clearly defined limits with Charter. They set their plan, X amount of bandwidth for X amount of money, unlimited usage. That was the terms and the limits of the deal. Maximum usage limits was set by bandwidth. That is what they were selling and what we were buying among tiers of slow, medium or fast, priced accordingly. Now Charter wants to change the deal. Will they change the price structure to reflect the new limits or simply pocket the difference plus any additional charges for overage? And will overage charges reflect established rates or be exaggerated?

Ok, lets rough up some numbers. Charter is willing to sell 60Mb/sec unlimited for $120/month. Assuming a person might burn through at maximum speed for the entirety of a month, what is the cost per Gigabyte?

Well that works out to be roughly $120 for 19,440 Gigabytes or $0.006/GB. Less than a penny. Granted, Charter is willing to bet nobody would actually use all available but that remains the bottom line and the company figures it can make money in the ball park of such rates. I mean if somebody used 1/8th of that, the cost would still be less than a nickel a GB.

And for anybody who thinks 60Mb/s is allot, please consider this: 60Mb/s is one high-def channel.

So I pay about $50/month for 5Mb (until recently) unlimited. Now if I saturated the link for an entire month the cost would be 1620 GB or $0.03/GB. If in reality I used 1/8th of that (as above) I would be using about 202 GB/month at a cost of $0.247/GB. Drop the cap to 100GB and the cost to consumer (or Charter Profit) rises to almost $0.50/GB.

I'm an above average bandwidth consumer, surf allot, download Linux ISO's, YouTube, Internet Radio and the rest. Just checking my router stats I'm using about 1GB/day on average. So I'm paying $50 a month for approximately 30GB of transfer at a cost of $1.66/GB. Have been paying for years. I'd love to pay the cap rate $0.50 per Gigabyte since my Internet bill would drop to $15/month.

Amazing that I'm not the one bitching. Charter is.

A matter that is no less than simply incredible. They sell to no one at a loss while making 16X profit on 99% of Internet customers, yet the company - Charter Communications - has not turned corporate profit since 1999 and as of this date is facing bankruptcy with stock trading under $0.08 a share. It's so bad that last quarter Charter realized a doubling of profit beyond any quarter previous and still couldn't manage to pay even half of the interest payment on their debt.

For the multitudes of Charter customers, if everyone paid double for services - the company would still fall short but amazingly, if we doubled our Internet payment portion of the bill we could have 60Mb/s Unlimited and Charter would be in the pink?

There is no bandwidth problem and there is no problem likewise given profit versus cost on the internet side of the fence but somehow, someway Charter managed to royally screw up a can't miss business model in high density monopoly markets and now turn to further pillage of their customer base in attempt to stave off further collapse. The Company also hopes financial markets will continue to provide them bad loans. With 21 Billion in current loans maturing by 2012 (2 Billion worth in 2009), Charter won't be profitable for twenty years IF they survive which doesn't look likely.

Nevertheless I have no doubt that Charter has a plan to triple profits as required and quite likely will include those defined limits and consequences your so fond of.

Just to recap; at %0.10/GB Charter profits 2X cost

Price

[hendridm]

I'm fine with it as long as they reduce the capped service fee to something close to the price of dialup.

Re:Price

[Ironica]

I'm fine with it as long as they reduce the capped service fee to something close to the price of dialup.

Why should they charge "something close" to the price of a service which is significantly lower-bandwidth?

Besides, dialup also requires a phone line... if you pay $12/month for the line, and $10/month for your dial-up service, you're getting close to what our family pays for our cable internet connection.

measuring usage?

[cavtroop]

I have Charter (no choice, its the only broadband, including DSL, available to me). Does anyone know of a way I can monitor my usage, to make sure I don't go over the cap? You KNOW Charter isn't going to give me the tools to do that myself...

Can Tomato or any other linksys alternatives do this?

100GB, jesus that sucks.

Re:measuring usage?

[Anonymous Coward]

well, just keep your torrenting of recorded movies and tv shows -- SORRY, LINUX DISTROS, right -- to a minimum and you should be fine.

Re:measuring usage?

[cavtroop]

every Netflix on-demand video is about 4-6GB.

Re:measuring usage?

[eredin]

Tomato can do it. It will give you several nice charts and graphs, including a list of GB/day and realtime bandwidth usage. I've been using it for about a month. I'm hooked.

Re:measuring usage?

[Anonymous Coward]

It looks like Tomato does what you want.

Re:measuring usage?

[Drizzt Do'Urden]

vnstat will do that for you ;)

Re:measuring usage?

[rindeee]

Not true. We watch several Netflix On Demand per day between my wife, kids and I. My daily average is 1.34GB as measured by Net-traffic. My highest ever was yesterday because both kids and wife were home sick and watched Netflix the entire day non-stop. Total for the 24hr period was 7713.176. Net-traffic is running on my IPCop box through which 100% of Internet bound traffic passes.

Re:measuring usage?

[rindeee]

Might I add, that's 7713.176 of the original Knight Rider series. So that's like 20GB of regular TV viewing when adjusted for cheese-factor.

Re:measuring usage?

[Sensible Clod]

I use GKrellM, which is a linux program, but it has been ported to windows.

GKrellM for Windows
GKrellM for linux

Enable the net monitor, then click the normally invisible button in the bottom right corner of the net monitor to check data transferred per day, week, or month.

Re:measuring usage?

[SamsLembas]

You definitely want to do this from the router. That way, no traffic can possibly slip past. As someone else said, Tomato will work. However, I have always found dd-wrt to be a more polished router distro. It has given me no problems. For best results, get a Linksys wrt line router to go with it.

Re:measuring usage?

[cavtroop]

A) you admitted to watching Knight Rider. Please hand in your geek card over there ---> :)

B) thats a TV show. What about movies? Granted, even at 3GB, I don't watch 33 movies a month, but between that, torrents, regular usage, VOIP, large emails, etc etc, I'm slightly worried.

Having said that, I have no real clue what I use now. I'll load up DD-WRT and get a clue. Thanks to everyone that dropped some help.

Re:measuring usage?

[sjames]

It seems reasonable that if an ISP is going to cap use, and especially if they are going to terminate people who 'abuse' unlimited accounts, they should have an obligation to tell you what your usage is (even if you DO measure it yourself, they need to tell you since they have a way of 'overestimating' that use).

Otherwise they need to implement a queueing scheme that keeps you just under the limit while permitting some reasonable use at all times (at least 1 VOIP). It's technically feasible to do that.

I suspect though that their real intent is to set a cap so they have an excuse to dump you back into dialup purgatory and keep you ignorant of how close you're getting so you'll err on the side of caution and never use as much as you're paying for.

Re:measuring usage?

[Greyfox]

Have you looked into having a fractional T1 dropped to your house? I'm sure you could find a provider to serve you access for a very reasonable $200-$400 a month. Your initial equipment outlay would be a small price to pay to free yourself from "the man"! And if you were so inclined you could sell service to your neighbors if they were similarly inclined (Either wireless or tossing Ethernet out the window.)

Of course, the overall speeds would be lower than what your cable company delivers and you might have to monitor your neighbors' usage to make sure they don't clog the pipes...

Re:measuring usage?

[berberine]

I use DU Meter.

http://www.dumeter.com/?LangID=EN

It works pretty well for me. It costs $25, but I know there are other versions out there that are free.

plan

[shentino]

Here's my ideal business plan:

1. You pay for every byte that passes THROUGH your pipe, no matter which way it goes.

Metering, at a simple rate, to discourage customers from using bandwidth wastefully

2. Your monthly charge depends on how relatively fat your tube is.

This for guarantees in the face of congestion. If people are starving for a limited bandwidth pie, you get a bigger share of it if you pay more. Possibly implemented as a CFS style algorithm.

Important points:

You pay for your usage
You don't get throttled unless bandwidth becomes scarce
In event of contention, you can pay to get a bigger share of it.

Re:plan

[Leebert]

1. You pay for every byte that passes THROUGH your pipe, no matter which way it goes.

Sweet. I'll fire up the DDOS botnet.

Re:plan

[geekoid]

So you have to pay for spam, people pinging your machine? someone portscanning your machine?

You forgot to include in your list that you are also paying for someone else's usage.

Re:plan

[shentino]

Actually, if you combine metering with rate limiting, you are, at worst, at what the status quo already is.

The beauty of metering PLUS rate limit is that if you don't fill your pipe, you effectively get a rebate for the BW you don't use.

DDoS and spam and whatnot are not a concern with this idea because:

1. They won't be able to exceed a throttle on your pipe any more than regular traffic would, and
2. spam and other network garbage can already clogs your tubes up anyway.

Re:Doing the math... (OT: Google calculator)

[vivaoporto]

Google can help a lot on this kind of calculation.

(250 gigabytes) / (25 Mbps) = 22.7555556 hours

Sometimes, because of how advanced google can be at providing answers for everything and anything, I wonder if with Google we are moving towards singularity. I for one welcome our all-seeing eye overlord.

P.S. It amazes me even more to know that the link to this very Slashdot article was returned by the above linked google query even before I submitted this comment. Scary (and circular) stuff!

I think this is a good time to start a new isp?

[Anonymous Coward]

and put a cap only on bandwidth? and only when the uplink is congested?

One reason.

[rindeee]

Netflix (and every other source that provides competition to Charter or Comcast or whomever). If not for Netflix and Hulu, my usage would be minimal. I do not have cable or satellite TV (or OTA for that matter). I pay charter for Internet only service, and I pay a premium because I only want Internet. Now I am going to pay another premium to actually make full use of that Internet. Perhaps Charter will start capping ports as well. "Ports 1 - 80 are free. With our Super Ports Family Pack, you get 81 - 443 for an additional $50 per month."

Re:One reason.

[Xtravar]

They already block 80 and probably a few others.

At least in my area.

Re:One reason.

[AndrewNeo]

Did they actually stop blocking port 80? I know they did after they converted from @Home, it's one of the things that's been keeping me from switching (other than poor service in my area, and now this, of course)

Botnet Zombies

[TheNinjaroach]

I wonder what effect those millions of bot-infected Windows XP clients are going to have on this situation. The Charter customers who have these infected PCs already don't know what's going on with their computer let alone how much bandwidth they use. They are going to be very angry when the service gets disconnected for bandwidth they haven't personally consumed or when their $50 broadband bill jumps to $150.

Re:Botnet Zombies

[Xtravar]

No, they'll just pay more and continue to be ignorant.

Re:Botnet Zombies

[cavtroop]

um, thats a GOOD THING? Then, maybe someone can hit these guys with a clue bat, and get their infected machines taken care of?

Voice vs. data

[tepples]

I find it funny that ISPs are switching to tiered plans while cell phone companies are switching to all you can eat plans.

Are the all-you-can-eat cell phone plans for voice or for data? Voice doesn't need more than 13 kbps using the 5:1 compression that GSM providers use, while consumer expectations of data throughput climb every year.

Re:Doing the math... (OT: Google calculator)

[Anonymous Coward]

Sometimes, because of how advanced google can be at providing answers for everything and anything, I wonder if with Google we are moving towards singularity. I for one welcome our all-seeing eye overlord.

Pfft. Talk to me when it can tackle partial differential equations.

BREAKING NEWS!

[C_Kode]

This just in, Charter Cable customers are capping monthly cash payments made to Charter Cable.

Re:BREAKING NEWS!

[AndrewNeo]

By cap I'm sure you mean a bottom cap, especially knowing Charter. $50/mo for internet is ridiculous as is.

Re:BREAKING NEWS!

[Waffle Iron]

This just in, Charter Cable customers are capping monthly cash payments made to Charter Cable.

Actually, what Charter has recently been capping the most is interest payments on its $2e10 debt:

Cable co Charter preps bankruptcy filing-sources

Re:Free Market 101.1a

[Anonymous Coward]

go take a dump? might get a stroke of genius?

Secondary Markets

[scorp1us]

Anytime there is an artificial scarcity, a market is created. This idea of bandwidth caps just creates a premium, secondary market.

Someone just needs a way to allocate downloads for the top 1% of users amongst the lesser users and have them transfer a CD/Flash/HDD. Now, normally we'd have a hassle of a physical device needing to be shipped, but these users could be houses next door or down the street. In fact the downloaders could be chosen by shortest geographical distance. Users would pay $5/month to the downloaders effectively upping the caps for a smaller-than-upgraded service fee. If the downloaders had several subscribers he might get his internet access paid for.

Just an idea.

Re:Secondary Markets

[Anonymous Coward]

Or maybe a group of neighbors will get together and share all the DVDs they've downloaded. I don't see how that's bad for the ISP.

But everybody in my house has to stream their own copies of all TV they watch using the official sites. I hate to say this, but I'd prefer simple time-based DRM to stream-only shit.

WHY?!

[Anonymous Coward]

This is so frustrating. My family left Roadrunner when they threatened to do this years ago. We were downloading 80-100GBs per month and they actually had the audacity to tell us that 40GB per month was reasonable. 1$ for every extra gig adds up and I certainly couldn't afford it.

Why don't we do something to stop this, rather than debating how it could work? Obama needs to step up on his word and shut this down before it spreads.

If anyone remembers, Dial-up worked kinda like this where you paid for the time you're online. It took years to get to unlimited services. Why ruin it now?!

Re:WHY?!

[Ironica]

Why don't we do something to stop this, rather than debating how it could work? Obama needs to step up on his word and shut this down before it spreads.

As far as I know, Obama has talked about investment in bringing broadband to places where it's currently unavailable... and not said anything about making sure that you, personally, can download 500GB a month at a low low flat rate.

If anyone remembers, Dial-up worked kinda like this where you paid for the time you're online. It took years to get to unlimited services. Why ruin it now?!

I remember AOL working like that, but most actual dial-up was a flat fee per month. If you had a dedicated phone line, you could stay dialed up pretty much full-time (and that's exactly what we did before we got our first cable internet account). Some ISPs would time you out for inactivity, but of course you could script your way around that.

Unlimited services are only an economically viable business model when there are some sort of natural limits on what people can use. "All you can eat" buffets can work because people can only eat so much at one time. They're pretty successful in mixed populations, but in certain areas (like near universities) they often have to create additional rules to remain profitable (like all you can eat within one hour).

Until relatively recently, there were much lower practical limits on what you could download. There was the speed of the line that could be provided to your house, the network card in your actual computer, and the expense of hard drive space. There has also been an explosion in the content available; the amount of video and audio content available (both legally and illegally) has exploded in the last couple of years. People can download more than they used to be able to, and there's more available that they want to download, too.

There's really no such thing as a viable flat-fee unlimited-access service. Either there's a practical limit on what individual customers can consume that protects your profit margin, or you need to have policy-based limits in place.

Re:WHY?!

[geekoid]

accept in this model there are two limits. how fast and how much.

Re:WHY?!

[Ironica]

Sure, I accept that.

Re:WHY?!

[plasmacutter]

There's really no such thing as a viable flat-fee unlimited-access service.

yes there is.

Capacity per second / number of users = each user's capacity per second.

No lies, no caps, no problems.

Re:WHY?!

[Anonymous Coward]

I definitely know he wants to expand broadband, but I thought he even said that he would like to see it as a free service where no one is discriminated. Frankly, I'd like to see all costs of the internet come from what you get out of it, not for the service itself.

And as for the AOL thing you speak of, mine never worked that way. If I was online, I paid for it. We may not have paid for a set amount of time for each month, but we paid for what we used. If I was online for 5 hours, I would pay more than if I was on for 1 hour.

Re:WHY?!

[Ironica]

There's really no such thing as a viable flat-fee unlimited-access service.

yes there is.

Capacity per second / number of users = each user's capacity per second.

No lies, no caps, no problems.

Capacity per second is limited, therefore, the service is not unlimited.

ALL SERVICE HAS LIMITS. The issue is whether the limits are practical limits on how much a person can use given the scenario, technology, equipment, etc., or the service provider has to impose limits if the practical limits on use cannot make "unlimited" access economically viable.

Is the usage available for viewing

[bossy]

With all these ISPs capping b/w doesn't it make sense for them to have a usage meter for their users when the log-in to their account or something like that?
Just like the cell phone providers do?

If you want me to cap a a quantitative limit, you should let me know how do I find out where I stand ..

Re:Is the usage available for viewing

[geekoid]

They should send an email to you when you hit half, 75% 90% 95%.

It would be nice if they didn't cap your email traffic.

Robber barons

[Zolodoco]

Implementing caps makes me assume that their infrastructure doesn't support growth in service to new customers. Therefore the rates on all their capped plans should go down in direct proportion to the reduction in service, or they should change the bandwidth on all plans to account for the growth in service without added infrastructure. If they're not doing either of those measure, then they're simply trying to milk more revenue out of their customers with no increase to their actual costs.

Re:Robber barons

[Zolodoco]

...they should change the bandwidth on all plans and decrease rates...

Re:Free Market 101.1a

[wolf12886]

Switch to one of the telecoms many competi... oh wait

Think of it as the ultimate

[Shivetya]

expression of redistribution of resources. Instead of being able to have what you can afford you can only have what everyone else can have.

Administered by corporate entity or government entity there is no difference in the outcome. Regardless of service availability everyone gets limited all to stop those who are "excessive" and help those under privileged.

Fuck Charter

[kmhebert]

Forget this! On top of the $50 a month they jacked my bill? See ya later jerks.

Netflix usage?

[aicrules]

Is there a reliable way to track your own bandwidth usage? Similar to tracking minute usage on cell phones? My concern is that I just got Netflix and have been going gang busters watching all sorts of stuff on Watch It Now. I'd want to know if my 3+hours of streaming a night will catch up with me.

Re:Netflix usage?

[cybrthng]

Good question. Our household will usually watch about 10 gigs a day of video content. Thats with 2 people working from home and 2 young girls all watching either netflix, hulu or xbox live content (we don't have cable tv)

Last month i did about 220gigs.. this month i'm already up to 38gigs.

With cold weather and snow i see we do about 15-20 gigs a day..

i'll have to keep an eye on my bills. Otherwise i use internet for vpn access myself but that bandwidth isn' much.

Re:Netflix usage?

[kullnd]

For me, VPN usage is where most of my bandwidth comes from, I've pushed multiple GB per day just in my VPN connections working from home, I usually have atleast 2 VPN tunnels up at any one time --- this does not include NetFlix and X-Box live that gets watched by the rest of my family --- I honestly would be scared if I was getting capped.

What happens when you hit the cap?

[Xian97]

Are you cut off for the rest of the month or is there an option to pay for more usage? I remember an earlier slashdot article talking about a tiered service being tested for AT&T but it had the provision to pay for additional capacity above and beyond the cap.

I figure this is just the start, the other big players will follow suit soon.

Re:Free Market 101.1a

[KeepAustinUgly]

Use your neighbor's unsecured wireless connection for usenet!

Interesting posibilities...

[DarthVain]

I was actually just thinking about this the other day. (as it happens to me now)

If you think about it, its kind of messed up. For example, the caps are based on a fictional date, that of your billing. Which in these instances, is monthly. While this may make sense for, "billing" it may not make sense, and have ramifications beyond for caps.

So for example I closely self monitor my cap. Which means at the beginning of the month I download like a whore. However nearing the end of the month, I might download a lot less, being aware that I am running out of cap. At the end of the month I might not download at all, because I have no cap space left at all.

What does this mean? Huge bandwidth demand all front loaded on any given month. Multiply that by many many users, and well you get the idea. Also odds are if you are not using your cap you are likely not using it much the whole month, pretty much constant with perhaps a random spike.

Now how about this as a business model. If ISP's wish to place caps, to me that says you are entitled to ALL of that bandwidth, as this is specifically what they are selling you. A given rate of speed for a given quantity. So what if you put in place a behind scenes an unobtrusive way to sell your unused bandwidth? Much like the stock market the price would go up and down with demand. Also you would make your cut of money by simply taking a small percentage off each sale, which when multiplied many many times over would equal Profit! I don't know how you would do it, or if it is technically feasible, or even legal, else I would do it right now and make my first million that way. Anyway an interesting idea eh?

It would also be the demise of "caps" as we know it. People might have a "soft" cap imposed by their ISP, however if they run out would be able to "buy" cap space from someone else if they so desire. Thus power users get what they pay for, and internet gets cheaper for those moderate or light users!

Re:Interesting posibilities...

[Anonymous Coward]

If you think about it, its kind of messed up. For example, the caps are based on a fictional date, that of your billing. Which in these instances, is monthly. While this may make sense for, "billing" it may not make sense, and have ramifications beyond for caps.

So for example I closely self monitor my cap. Which means at the beginning of the month I download like a whore. However nearing the end of the month, I might download a lot less, being aware that I am running out of cap. At the end of the month I might not download at all, because I have no cap space left at all.

What does this mean? Huge bandwidth demand all front loaded on any given month. Multiply that by many many users, and well you get the idea. Also odds are if you are not using your cap you are likely not using it much the whole month, pretty much constant with perhaps a random spike.

This is only a problem if all their customers are on the same billing cycle, which is unlikely.

Re:Interesting posibilities...

[Seraphim_72]

And your post is the perfect place to ask this.



I have an uncapped full 1G to my desk at work. What can I run from work to home to 'max out' my connection every month? I cannot torrent from work. I suppose I could just ftp files up and down but I was looking for something more elegant.

Re:Interesting posibilities...

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably puts nary a dent in it, but I tunnel browsing from work over SSH. Good for burning some bandwidth and keeping the eye-tee Nazis from logging my web traffic.

Re:Interesting posibilities...

[Stormie]

So for example I closely self monitor my cap. Which means at the beginning of the month I download like a whore. However nearing the end of the month, I might download a lot less, being aware that I am running out of cap. At the end of the month I might not download at all, because I have no cap space left at all. What does this mean? Huge bandwidth demand all front loaded on any given month.

I don't know how these guys are planning to do it, but my (Australian) ISP implements each customer's cap based on the monthly anniversary of their connection being activated. So mine goes from the 8th of each month to the 7th of the next month. As a result, there's no network-wide pattern of people using their cap early in the month (or using it all late in the month so they don't "waste" it).

As an aside, they also provide a toolbox page on their website where you can see your cap usage (broken down as finely as an hourly level), and see exactly where you stand. I'm honestly boggles that any ISP would implement a cap and not provide such a measurement.

Re:Interesting posibilities...

[ion.simon.c]

I'm honestly boggles that any ISP would implement a cap and not provide such a measurement.

You forget. We're talking about a USian telecom. These caps are all about short-term profit increases. :/

Re:Interesting posibilities...

[Anonymous Coward]

not everyone has the same billing cycle :P

Re:Free Market 101.1a

[AndrewNeo]

Cry about it because they have a monopoly over cable internet service in your area and you can't get DSL?

Re:Free Market 101.1a

[koutbo6]

I think 101.1a protocol is proprietary. You need to pay a license fee to use it.

Well of course they are.

[nurb432]

its the going thing, oversell and expand your monopoly then once you get enough customers cut them back.

Going to get worse before it gets better im afraid.

24hrs @ 25Mbit/s = 263GB (!!)

[Anonymous Coward]

They should put that in the ads. "You get 30 times less bandwidth than you could if we weren't just a pack of evil dicks! Buy now!"

It's the Ciiiiircle of Life

[harlequinade]

1/ Charter are in debt and need money. 2/ They cap people's Bandwidth. 3/ Their victims upgrade to get more. 4/ Charter make far more money. Customers Screwed = Problem Solved.

Re:It's the Ciiiiircle of Life

[troll8901]

5/ Other providers do the same. 6/ All providers lobby in congress. 7/ Government gives bailouts. 8/ All providers happy.

It's the ciiiiircle of life...

-----

In the meantime, all other countries moves ahead without waiting for Western Europe or USA...

10 years from now, providers will ask for more subsidies from the government to "chase up to the competition", "once again, put USA on the world map", and "research and develop own equipment" because "China refuses to export advanced technology to USA".

Well

[ShooterNeo]

I think it is fair that they are offering an uncapped service.

BUT : is this a scam like cell phone text messenging?

Where if you go past your cap one month, you could receive a bill for $500...far more than the company would have accepted for unlimited service?

That's what really irks me : situations where the company can charge a stupendous amount of money that is 10 times what they would have accepted for unlimited service.

I think these kinds of abusive, after the fact contracts should be outlawed : both cell and cable companies are monopolies, and should not have the freedom to force customers to agree to such deals.

Anticompetition Move?

[Anonymous Coward]

Charter's main business is still television. Not to go all conspiracy theory, but since the main bandwidth hog is streaming video, I have to wonder if this is really a network management issue or a move against online competitors.

Be reasonable ... this is a non-issue

[golodh]

What a non-issue. A 100 Gb a month cap for a 15 Mbps is completely reasonable.

There are always people who feel that the world owes them something, like unlimited data traffic so that they can download videos all day (which is about the only way to hit the 100 Gb. a month cap) on a low-price subscription. Such people need to wake up.

To those who hadn't noticed, the Internet is suffering from throughput problems. And adding extra capacity costs money. So either you pay your way (and take a subscription without cap) or you take a cheapo subscription and agree that your monthly download volume will be capped. I really don't see the problem.

Re:Be reasonable ... this is a non-issue

[geekoid]

what throughput issues?
I haven't noticed any.

If they want to cap, that's fine but it better be clearly marked in the ad. None of this saying unlimited, or virtual unlimited.

That's the issue.

Re:Be reasonable ... this is a non-issue

[tinkerghost]

To those who hadn't noticed, the Internet is suffering from throughput problems.

Wrong. There is no throughput problem with "the internet"; there are "last mile" problems with ISPs that have oversold their networks. There are places like the DC loop where 2/3 of the fiber laid is still dark. The Tier 1 Peering points still have a substantial amount of room for growth without substantial investment.

Charter & Comcast both vastly oversell their networks - some areas were suggested to be able to support only 5-10% of the bandwidth sold - I'm not sure that's improved in the last 3 years. But that's not a throughput problem with the internet - that's a greedy company trying to provide the bare minimum service while selling it as premium.

Pure Power Play

[Anonymous Coward]

As others have mentioned, this is a pure power play in anticipation that video on demand via the internet will continue to erode their competing services.

They want to hinder HD video downloads via the internet because they can't make _enough_ money from it by just being a pipe provider.

Not nearly enough competition.

100Gb/month = 40Kbps

[corsec67]

At 15 Mbps, 100 GB is only 15 hours at full bore in one direction.

Since 100Gb/month is a rate, why not just convert it to 40Kbps?

So that plan is "15Mbps max, monthly average max of 40Kbps".

Re:100Gb/month = 40Kbps

[Arterion]

Or by some reckoning, you have a 40Kbps connection burstable to 15Mpbs.

So...

[geekoid]

How big is a blu-ray disk? 50 GB?

250GB will get eaten up pretty quick as more and more people turn to net delivery of media.

Re:So...

[TrancePhreak]

How much of that 50GB disc actually goes toward the movie? About 15-18GB.
How much bandwidth does Netflix HD use? 3.5megabits/s. That's 163 hours of HD content. Not sure how much the SD movies use.

Wish I had more choices

[Taibhsear]

Comcast sucks balls. I signed up with them and did not read or sign anything that mentioned a cap. I get a call saying I downloaded over 500GB in one month. I said it was absurd. Apparently they count UPLOADS in addition to the downloads towards the cap. I received no information on the cap until that phonecall. "We sent it with the bill" No you didn't. "We emailed you" Funny, you don't have my email nor do I have a comcast email account. The charter caps are even worse. How the hell does anyone watch movies or listen to music anymore? If it wasn't for my gf I wouldn't even have tv. I just get all my programs when I want them instead of watching the 1000 stupid channels with nothing on them 95% of the day. Not to mention the extra charge for an HD converter box (which my tv does automatically by itself for free over the air without the compression artifacts you get from comcast's stream) which they also don't let you buy from a third party (you can only rent it from them). And the extra charge if you don't have their cable tv service. It's fucking extortion. Big shock, no other options. I don't want the tv. I just want fast unlimited internet. DSL is out of the question, it is way too slow for my purposes. Oh and comcast also doesn't have a way to pay for a higher cap either. If I want no caps I have to go with a business account for twice as much and I also would have to pay for a phone service with them on top of it for some reason if I do that.

I heard RCN horror stories too but before we moved my gf had faster downloads with RCN than I was getting with comcast for 1/4th the cost I was paying. Oh and no charges for not using their other services bundled with it. (not to mention far less throttling of torrents) I'm sick of these pricks holding my wallet and connectivity ransom.

They also don't have software available for you to track your own bandwidth unless you install their bullshit Macaffe software (that shit isn't coming NEAR my systems). They won't tell you what you are at until you go over it. How is this even remotely fair? "I won't tell you the rules of the game but I'll only tell you when you break them and have no choice but to take the penalty."

So now I am researching wireless cracking just so I don't get cut off from the outside world. Thanks telcos you just might have turned me into a criminal. Fucking asshats.

Re:Wish I had more choices

[Anonymous Coward]

Would you like some cheese with your trollish whine?

Re:Wish I had more choices

[plasmacutter]

RCN?

As a Charter customer...

[hansamurai]

This kind of worries me. I time/format shift a ton of TV shows by just torrenting them, and lately, I've been streaming a ton of Netflix movies and TV shows to my Xbox 360. I have absolutely no idea how much bandwidth I'm actually using, so they'd better have some kind of tool that will show me how I'm doing.

I already have to keep an eye on and balance the bandwidth for my web site, doing it at home too is going to be annoying.

Re:As a Charter customer...

[atarione]

yeah it should our bandwidth went from about 30GB~ to well over 100GB since I set up our HTPC. We now regularly watch shows via the internet (Netflix /hulu) and a more torrenting). Charter is going to be seriously limiting peoples ability to leverage the content now available via the internet with this.

perhaps I guess they might just screw themselves as people drop cable tv and shift the funds to the top tier (unlimited) internet service then beat the hell out of it for all their entertainment needs.

Re:As a Charter customer...

[hansamurai]

How are you monitoring your current bandwidth usage? I would like to get an idea of what I'm using before this is implemented.

Re:As a Charter customer...

[Anonymous Coward]

I am also a Charter customer and just checking my last months USAGE FOR 1 DAY was 100GB and 70GB the next day. These two days alone would have put me way over the 100GB limit. Where do these companies get off thinking the can horde money, not upgrade their service, and then make us pay for some arbitrary limit they set. The cap should be Y Mbps * 60 Seconds * 60 Min * 24 hours * 31 Days. So if I did the math correct for 5 Mbps the limit should be should be just under 1560 GB, which is a far cry from 100GB.

The end of free wi-fi?

[zig43]

So does this mean everyone will have to lock down their wireless routers to keep their neighbors from jacking up their internet bill?

Re:The end of free wi-fi?

[hamburgler007]

Most people have wised up at this point and have locked down their routers.

Re:The end of free wi-fi?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you haven't already done this, why are you on Slashdot? I mean, seriously. GTFO our internet.

Re:The end of free wi-fi?

[rickthewizkid]

Sorta. It means that now, instead of you and three neighbors "sharing" one Wifi connection (at $50), each one of those people will get their own connection (at $50 *each*).

So is 15Mbps 100 or 250?

[chemosh6969]

"Speeds of 15Mbps or slower will have a 100GB monthly cap, while 15-25Mbps speeds will have a 250GB monthly cap." Do they even proof read anything before putting it out there?

Blasphemer ....

[tinkerghost]

Many years ago I would have argued with you about that ... of course that was before I took a red hot poker to my eyes after being surprised by 1 too many goatse pictures.

Want something to cry about?

[drpatt]

My only option out here in the stix (except for Hughes.net :P ) is Verizon AirCard Broadband. $80/months for 5GB. I would love to have Charter's "limits."

Same Old Song & Dance

[EGenius007]

Telecoms have long been saying that they can't provide the service they're selling customers--at least not in the form of a 24/7 pipe. Now they're finally coming out in the open about the limitations. That'd be great if consumers actually had viable alternatives. As it stands consumers with more than 2 choices are extremely lucky, but even in those cases where multiple choices ARE available it's likely that ALL of the companies have similar caps.

If you're fortunate enough to live in an area where you have the option, vote with your wallets.

Re:$65 per mbps is a bit expensive, a**holes

[Nethemas the Great]

I think you could use a healthy does of reality and a touch of humility. Infrastructure costs money and you are not the sole user thereof. Charter is being more than generous given said infrastructure in the ground when compared to other providers. At present time no reasonable person should require even the 100GB/month provided their activities on said pipe were legal. If for some reason you had no use for being gainfully employed and wished to simultaneously stream HD video into three rooms of your house for your every waking minute you certainly have the option of the no cap 60Mb/s pipe. An option given the cost of purchasing streaming video which shouldn't be outside the realm of a reasonable expenditure.

At present time I'd gladly accept the option to pay $50/month for a 5Mb/s pipe having a 100GB/month cap where I live. Alas I'm stuck with $89/month for a 1.5Mb/s pipe having a 400MB/day save a 3 hour unlimited window between 3-6am EST cap along with the wonderful packet routing efficiency that comes with a 36,000 mile round trip.

This offering by Charter is a good deal especially in areas where there is competition with other providers. Don't throw the baby out with the bath water, this is the start of something we've been lustfully waiting for for years.

Videotron did this

[Anonymous Showered]

Videotron (the dominant cable company in Quebec for TV and internet) did this a while ago (2004 I think) and the outcome was no good. For two consecutive months, my bills were upwards of 300$. I said 'fuck it' and canceled my contract with them. I switched to their largest competitor at the time, Bell Sympatico (shitty PPPoE). They eventually also installed bandwidth caps, so I went with the Bell resellers (and they touted unlimited usage). I called up the sales reps of these companies several times to confirm that "if I download a terabyte of porn, will you bill me for excess usage?" to which their prompt reply was, "No".

Eventually, up until last year, I found out that Videotron's business division had faster and true unlimited usage of their lines (the 7 Mbps service). They have been unlimited for several years and said they never plan to install bandwidth caps since their business users are into multimedia and whatnot ("they upload large files to the web" the tech said). I setup a company and I am now the happy customer of a Videotron business line at home, paying a whopping 70$ CDN + taxes for a true 7 Mbps line. Very stable and hasn't gone down since I got it.

Here's how it works

[Shadow of Eternity]

I ignore that I pay for a 3mbit connection and don't complain that I am lucky to get 1.5mbit once in a while because in exchange for my tolerating poor quality of service you provide an unlimited quantity of that service.

If I'm going to get a hard bandwidth cap I damn well want a built-in adblocker and guarantee of a minimum speed.

Numbers and comments

[Wardish]

Ok, A few numbers to start with:

1 Megabyte (M / MB) = 2^20 bytes = 1,048,576 bytes
1 Gigabyte (G / GB) = 2^30 bytes = 1,073,741,824 bytes

15Mbps = 15 X 1,048,576bps = 15,728,640bps
15,728,640bps X 60 sec/min X 60 min/hour X 24 hour/day X 30 days/month = 40,768,634,880,000 bits/month
40,768,634,880,000 bits/month / 1,073,741,824 bits / Gb = 37968.75 Gb
37968.75 Gb / 8 bits per byte = 4746.09375 GB
15 Mbps connection capped at 100 GB = 2.107 % of the possible bandwidth (4746.09375 GB).

25 Mbps connection capped at 250 GB = 3.16 % of the possible bandwidth (7910.15625 GB).

Now if I sign up for a max downloaded data of 100 GB with max speed of 15Mbps then fine.

If I signed up last week for a 15Mbps connection and they are cutting me back to 2.1 % of that connection (regardless of how much I actually use), then I have a problem.

Math = Epic Fail

[geekoid]

That's only 5 dual sided blu-ray disks.
1mb comes to:
2,592,000,000,000

per 30 day month. Much more then 250gb
Now of you screwed up you casing and meant to say you have 1 megabit down load, and 250gigabytes cap, it's still not enough.

324,000,000,000

Why would you say that about Google?

[Greyfox]

Google is your friend! And it just wants to help! Perhaps Google could recommend an appropriate reeducation center to help you see that Google is just there to serve you...

The internet is expanding while we shrink away

[Anonymous Coward]

Korea is going to Gbit service country wide and we are spending our time capping our users with this crap. Any wonder this country is where it is?

Time Warner Cable/TWC too for other cities...

[antdude]

See here: http://www.electronista.com/articles/09/02/04/twc.data.caps.spread/ ... :(

Most EU countries have no cap

[jonfr]

Far as I know, most EU countries don't have any cap at all. This is at least true for Denmark, Sweden, Netherlands, Belgium that I know of.

UK has caps, not sure why. Iceland also has caps, it annoys me and all the people I know.

Internet caps are stupid and nothing more then over pricing the internet connection.

Why this is happening in the US is something that I don't understand. This must be pure greed that is happening over there.

Re:Most EU countries have no cap

[hamburgler007]

Ice caps?

Makin' Money No Matter What...

[webgodjj]

Ya... it seems that most people are starting to turn to the internet to watch video. So a cable company is getting upset that the bandwidth is getting larger, see's it's loosing viewers, and wants to compensate themselves for it somehow?

Or, about 15 hours a month

[JSBiff]

Really simple way to illustrate the problem to people - If you were to use the full capacity of your connection, you would only be allowed about 15 hours a month of activity. Now, to be somewhat fair to Charter, et. al., most people don't come close to tapping the actual capacity of their internet connection anyhow - in my experience, most file servers and web sites won't download files to me at close to the full connection speed. Streaming HD video only needs about 2.0Mbps, I think. VoIP/Webcams take maybe 1Mbps. Online games need low latency, but I don't think they actually use up that much bandwidth - maybe what, like 100-200 Kbps?

15Mbps service is nice, though, because it does mean I can be using Teamspeak, downloading files in the background, and watching an HD movie all at the same time.

I suppose these caps will hit people who heavily use P2P file sharing though. You know, I wonder - do these caps include same-network traffic? I think it would be tremendously intelligent (so it probably won't happen) for ISPs like Charter, Time-Warner, Comcast, etc, to try to work with P2P software providers to develop clients that preferentially 'bias' P2P traffic to stay within the same ISP network where possible. That is, if a torrent or other p2p client where trying to find a source to download the files from, it would try to pick other clients on the same network to transfer from - of course, that's only helpful when you have a lot of people seeding.

Still, the point is, I think that the ISPs could find P2P technologies to be tremendously beneficial for themselves and their customers, if they implemented things correctly. You could extend the P2P concept to cache-ing mechanisms (something like a p2p version of squid, perhaps). I really think that the benefits of p2p technologies are dramatically under-utilized, currently, because most bean-counters hear p2p and think 'copyright thieves'.

Blizzard is one company that has at least 1/2 a clue - it's my understanding that their updated for WoW uses bittorrent to distribute updates to their millions of users - what a great way to help make sure that users don't have to wait for hours for their computer to be able to download updates on patch day because of an overloaded update server (an experience I've had on several occasions with other MMO's that used a 'centralized' update server that simply couldn't handle 20000+ users all trying to connect simultaneously and download a 100MB+ file).

good!

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe Charter will actually be able to offer what you pay for. I had them for years... after 5PM my 10mbit package would crawl under 1mbit. My area forum concluded it was a regional problem. I ended up switching to 6mbit/512 DSL from Charter 10mbit/1mbit due to the fact DSL consistently provides bandwidth.

Please mod my post down

[troll8901]

I don't like the way I sound - it sounds whiny and flamish. Please mod my previous post down.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:$65 per mbps is a bit expensive, a**holes

[Torvaun]

How about a reasonable family? Let's say two of them download games on Steam, one of them uses a VPN to work, and one of them plays WoW. Maybe they occasionally watch TV on Hulu. Think they wouldn't hit the cap?

AT&T screwed us in Nov. Now Charter...

[CeePhour]

Two months ago I left AT&T because them implemented bandwidth caps. They capped their highest tier ("6.0Mb/s", never goes over 4.8Mb/s) at 80GB a month. They have a website up at http://broadband-usage.att.com/ that kindly shows you what APPEARS to be a 150GB/month limit (that is the limit for their "6.0Mbps" U-verse service) no matter what service you have. Delve deeper into the FAQ, and you will see the real caps. Very deceptive. The rate they charge per-GB for overages is $1.

I switched to Charter for my phone and internet, hoping to be counted by their bean-counters as a lost customer, thanks to their greed. However, it appears I have just traded one evil for another.

I called Charter three times today so far. I've spoken to two "account retention" employees and one "technical support" guy (thinking he may know his ass from a hole in the ground. I was wrong.), in addition to two supervisors.

They currently have no way for their customers to monitor their bandwidth. Even the tech support guy said he has no way to view my bandwidth.

And not one of them had heard today's news.

Not one of them could offer anything other than, "Uh, well, I dunno...".

However, I present to you the comic relief provided by Charter representatives :

When told about the story on Slashdot (Charter tech support guy): "What? On Slashnet you say?"

When told about the story on DSLReports.com (Charter account retention employee): "Sir, we're cable, not DSL."

*sigh*

Way to hold the country back. Corporate greed will always win over progress.

Lower prices?

[DigitAl56K]

Here's what I want to know.

You have a service, you charge $x for it, and you complain that the high bandwidth users are a problem. So you move them off into a higher tier. Surely the price of the lower tier should then come down proportionally?

But it won't.

And worse still that now even more artificially high price of the lowest tier will be used to further justify the new pricing of the higher tiers.

This is a total scam. Instead of increasing capacity the networks are actually scamming customers to increase revenue (due to sustained income vs reduced cost for the lower tiers plus premium pricing for higher tiers).

Ummm, then you're dumb?

[Anonymous Coward]

"As for myself, I'd be happy with a 100 Meg cap, since my traffic report says I only downloaded 55 Meg last month."

So it sounds like you browse web pages, download a few files, and then check email.

Why would you pay for a high speed line to do that? You'd be better off with a 768Kbps DSL for $20 a month. Seriously, you're pissing your money away, and you're a dream for the finance guys at the cable company.

Just a coincidence

[joeboomer628]

All the major players in the cable broadband all decide at the same time that they need to cap usage. I smell a rat and experience tells me that consumers are going to get bitten by it. I predict there is an aspect of this cap thing that will cost us money at some point in the not too distant future. The US already pays more for less broadband than the rest of the developed world.

Re:$65 per mbps is a bit expensive,

[LordWill]

I'm an engineer and I don't know even vaguely how much bandwidth is used at my house. I don't count up the uses I know about, but there are plenty of uses I don't know about, like automatic update checks, game usage or at worst, viruses using my bandwidth for their purposes.

People flocked to flat-rate pricing long ago because they wanted access, but didn't want the surprise bill at the end of the month.

Another question: do laws have to be enacted to verify that the bandwidth meter is accurate, the way gas stations pumps must?

Not enforced

[QitUP]

This is what charter Customer Service said: (Me): I read on slashdot that it will be added to the user policy at 100gb a month (Me): at the end of the month TTD Alek : Yes, that is correct, Chris. If you will exceed that amount, you will only be given a notice that you have exceeded it. (Me): Thats it? I use over 100gb weekly probably TTD Alek : That's okay. It is not strictly enforced.

on what planet?

[Uberbah]

If I can recall, every time I've seen a story about slashdot before today, there were 100 comments saying "They need to just have a firm cap." Now everyone is complaining about the firm cap.

You're making shit up. Comments revolve around three things:

1. There is no such thing as a bandwidth hog, only people using what they pay for.
2. Rather than instituting caps, ISP's should stop being lazy & greedy, and either stop overselling their connections, or upgrade their hardware. Because...
3. People in Asia and Europe get far faster connections for far less money, and some are aiming for 1 Gbps connections to the home. And don't give us any bullshit like "but Amerika is ruuural!" That explains why you can't get a 50 Mbps full duplex connection in Bumfuck, Wyoming. It doesn't explain why you can't get 50 Mpbs in NYC or San Francisco.

What has changed with this story? Not a damned thing. ISP's are being lazy & greedy again (in this case Charter), and people are bitching about it. Not only are you speaking out of your ass, but in an impressive bit of synergy, you're an asshole speaking out of your ass.

Bingo

[tkrotchko]

You've hit the nail on the head. 250GB isn't that much data today, not really. And 3 years from now, it will seem like even less. This talk that "there's no way a 'normal' person could hit 250GB" reminds of when somebody said "640KB should be enough for anybody". The internet today isn't just surfing the web and checking email. That's a usage pattern from about 1997. Today, the internet is videos, streaming music, high bandwidth apps. I think it's odd that everybody assumes their internet pattern is the "normal" one.

Plus, it reminds me of 1996 when the internet got popular and all the ISP's complained that people were staying on so long, so they limited usage to 30-40 hours per month. Because a "normal" person didn't need to be on that long.

That seems silly and quaint today. And bandwidth caps are more of the same.

cry more

[__aabgfe356]

bloody americans whinging about OMG a 100gb cap? Here we have a standard (from major ISPs) of about 20, up and down inclusive.

Still way better than Cox

[Anonymous Coward]

Your basic Cox 10 mbps line has a 40 GB/mo cap. The higher-end 15-20 mbps line has a 60 GB/mo cap. That's it. You can hit those limits in a matter of hours, it's pretty stupid that they even connect you that fast when you can easily blow out your cap in less than a single work-day.

100GB x 10 Neighbors Open WiFi = 1000 GB

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey whatza problem bro... with as many open wifi ssids floating around, 1000GB is a conservative estimate of my cap ^_^

Time to cancel TV and subscribe 60MB internet

[9gezegen]

I live in St. Louis, and I'm a charter customer. I live in a well developed area next to the business district. My internet connection was very bad (I have 5 MB connection, but get all kind of rates, ranging from 50kps to 4.5MB). I even tried to switch ATT Universe (DSL). But looks like, at the heart of St. Louis, the technology is still from 70s. My house is at the center of the street, so it is far away from both ends, where the nodes are located. (1.5 block for f*cks sake !!!!) ATT Universe can't be supported as they still use copper wire as opposed to their advertised fiber). Same reasoning suggested for the bad quality of Charter service. Mind you, Charter is STL based so you would expect it to be the best service. Anyway, I still have to use Charter. My bill for Phone+Internet+TV is around $120+tax. For the last few weeks, my internet connection was surprisingly stable at 5mb, and I think it is related to infrastructure upgrade. Now, instead of giving $140 for all above services, it seems to me the best option at this time is to discard all their services and subscribe for 60MB internet only. I already have Roku, and can connect a linux server with Myth-TV for other options. I think this decision will not have the same effect as Charter hoped as other customer may join me in this.

Re:$65 per mbps is a bit expensive, a**holes

[plasmacutter]

I think you could use a healthy does of reality and a touch of humility. Infrastructure costs money and you are not the sole user thereof.

and we gave the hundreds of billions of dollars to build it out, which they promptly fed to their upper management in bonuses.

They squandered our tax money, and should now be held accountable!

Mod Parent UP.. Collusion already starting.

[plasmacutter]

See here: http://www.electronista.com/articles/09/02/04/twc.data.caps.spread/ ... :(

The collusion is already starting.

So that makes:
Time warner
Comcast
Charter

Anyone else want to add to this list?

Re:Mod Parent UP.. Collusion already starting.

[antdude]

Probably many more. Imagine Verizon did this with FIOS. :(

I have to respect them for this.

[John Sokol]

I mean for me, it's that they are being upfront about it. They aren't messing with your traffic, or saying you can't have the higher bandwidth and traffic, but if your going to use that much you must pay.
I think that is more then fair.
Sadly us heavy bandwidth users will ending up having to pay more now. That $140 seems steep but it is a lot of bandwidth, especially if they can offer some level of improve quality, because they have provisioned for it.

Theyve capped because they have no money

[Anonymous Coward]

NASDAQ:CHTR Their stock price has lost over 98% since mid 2007.
Im willing to bet that they are capping because they have little money to keep upgrading.

Ha, lucky!

[ODiV]

Here's mine:
20 GB (20,000 MB) of free data transfer per month (incremental usage billed at $10/GB).
Yellowknife $89.95
Whitehorse $89.95
Fort Nelson $79.95
High Level $79.95
Northwestel Cable

Re:Ha, lucky!

[elij]

OK.. you win.

Re:$65 per mbps is a bit expensive, a**holes

[Nethemas the Great]

I can't fathom why I'm being modded a troll but so be it.

What you say about the $200B may be true but even so, there was quite a bit of fiber laid even if it wasn't ever hooked up to anything.

There's dark fiber running for miles out by where I live for instance. They installed it more than a decade ago. That bright orange conduit is poking up out of the ground all over the place laughing at me. The telco is only just now starting to hook it up.

I cannot recall the specific source but if I'm recalling correctly to actually put an Asian style infrastructure in the ground for the entire US would be on the order of $1.6T. People can keep pointing back to the $200B tax-cuts to subsidize laying pipe in rural America (yes rural, not urban areas) but in reality even if it all made it to where the money was intended it would have only been a drop in the bucket.

Like it or not, history or not, the infrastructure is not in the ground. And it is not cheap by a long shot to lease or lay new fiber. Contrary to popular opinion you can't turn a $20M CEO compensation package into $20B just by virtue re-appropriating it. Capacity is being increased all the time, competition from people like Charter can only help spur it on.

But these telcos are not being capricious a**holes to those 1 out of 100 people who think it's their God given right to have a dedicated OC3 pipe for $29.95/month simply for the sake of being capricious a**holes. They need to ensure that the average user--for whom the infrastructure was designed--is able to enjoy a reasonable quality of service. That's not possible if there's a minority of people constantly consuming the majority of capacity torrenting warez and movies.

This is about future profit

[praetorblue]

Cable companies see that bandwidth usage is set to explode over the next 5 years, primarily due to widespread adoption of video, and they are preparing to make a hefty profit off of tiered data transfer caps, rather than the "all you can eat" commoditized bandwidth they have now.

This has nothing to do with managing high-usage customers today, it's about positioning themselves to make a fortune from everyone in a few years.

If I asked you 10 years ago how much bandwidth you'd be using today, what would you have said? At the time, modems were all the rage, and transferring an ISO or watching HD video (what WAS that, 10 years ago? 320x240?) online was laughable. What will we use our bandwidth for in the next decade that we can't imagine yet?

May Cause Herpes, Read at Your Own Risk.

[Anonymous Coward]

Okay, here is my story. I find out through many reputable websites that charter is implementing a new AUP ( Acceptable User Policy) Under policy 13 they have added something to the "No Excessive Use of Bandwidth" starting February 9th.

It goes something like this. "Residential service usage will not exceed 100GB of bandwidth per month
for Customers subscribing to Services of 15 Mbps or less per month and
250GB of bandwidth per month for Customers subscribing to Service over
15 Mbps and up to 25 Mbps." Which is basically every charter user.

I am very concerned that Leonard and I will go over this CAP very soon; so I call up charter. After being on hold for a bit, I tell them I have questions concerning the new bandwidth cap that is being implemented soon. First off, the customer service rep had no clue what I was talking about until he searched his computer for the records of the new changes. He was baffled that he didn't know about it. Apparently, there is ONE percent of users that are using excessive bandwidth amounting up to 1TB of data, but the other Ninety-Nine Percent are fine. I continue to stress what we use the internet for; regular surfing, online gaming, music, watching streaming webcasts, and netflix constantly. He was very polite and said it wasn't fair and we seem to not abuse the system; so he escelates me to Retention. I had no clue that being transferred to Retention would have been so fun.

After the ten minute hold, Lisa greets me. I couldn't tell if she was hot or not, but that doesn't matter. She also was confused to what I was talking about when I asked about the cap and if there was going to be an repercussions to exceeding the limit. Of couse, I was put on hold while she talked to a former "Internet Specialist" only to find out that they didn't know what I was talking about either. She then continued to argue with me saying that I'm wrong and that where ever I had read this information it wasn't true. I even told her to look at Chater's own AUP agreement that was just updated the day before. She was the spin master of all spin masters. Bill O'Reily would have shit his pants. I was told that I am asking the wrong questions and the information I was getting is wrong. When the fact is I not only got the info from the actual Charter.net website, I also have been reading it all over the web for a week now PLUS the customer service rep before her found the info and was reading it for the first time. What is really scary is she said that there would have been some notification in the mail or email about the amendment in the user agreement. It's was so hidden that a customer had to inform thier employees of a big change in policy. Maybe charter had a cap on memos in the office place, or the employees cap'D on thier own internet from watching porn and downloading trojans that they didn't get that email memo. ( i think i overDID that one, oh well) Just an after thought.

Well, this part I'm kinda on the edge about. I take pride in holding my cool when talking to customer service; In fact, I think I'm too polite. LISA was spinning it around so much that I called her out on it. Eventually she wouldn't shut up and let me finish a sentence; for a while I must have sounded like Dana Carvey's Ross Perot saying "Can I finish" every few seconds. So, I said it was it fun and hung up.

Um, is this round three? I call back to make sure the first employee wasn't sabotaging Chater's good name by telling me there was indeed a cap. I don't remember her name but it was kinda like ShLeronda i think, but that isn't important. What is important is she immediatly found the AUP amendment in the system that LISA wouldn't just go check for me while she was spinning like a record player. So, ShLeronda talked to her supervisor and put me through. Apperently, you get promoted when you know less than your fellow employees. First she said she was from Canada. Then, I was told that watching things like netflix is "streaming" and takes less bandwidth than "downloading" a movie...... ITS THE SAME THI