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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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.

$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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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.

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.

[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/

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.

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?

[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: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.

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

[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

[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]

"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

[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.

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.

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: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"

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:Doing the math...

[AndersOSU]

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

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!

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."

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.

BREAKING NEWS!

[C_Kode]

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

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.

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 ..

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.

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:Better service

[koutbo6]

could wimax be the solution?

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!"

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.

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: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.

Re:100Gb/month = 40Kbps

[Arterion]

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

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...

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?

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.