Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
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?
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.)
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?
'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.
A morning without coffee is like something without something else.
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.
Whale
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.
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"
'...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
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.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
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.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
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 ..
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.
You speak London? I speak London very best.
could wimax be the solution?
You speak London? I speak London very best.
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.
Reviewing just the first hour of video games.
"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?
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.
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.
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?
I see your informative link, and raise you a pithy comment.
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.
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.
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.
Planning to be moderated ± 1: Bad Pun.