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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.
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?
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.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
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.
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?
The difference between spam and poop is that you don't have to dig through septic tanks looking for real food. -- Me
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.