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Rogers Shrinks Download Limits As Netflix Arrives
Meshach writes "Hot on the heels of Netflix coming to Canada, Rogers (one of the biggest ISPs in Canada) has shrunk download limits. 'As of Wednesday, new customers who sign up for the Lite service will be allowed 15 gigabytes, a drop from the 25 GB limit offered to those who signed up before July 21. Meanwhile, any new Lite user who goes over the monthly limit will have to pay $4 per GB up to a maximum of $50 — a spike from the previous $2.5 per GB surcharge.' Officially, there is no connection between the two events, but it seems an odd coincidence, especially when Rogers charges customers who exceed their bandwidth allowance."
there IS a connection between the two events. Boycott Rogers.
I like how the overflow bandwidth costs over 500% wholesale costs. $4.5 is just insane. I almost wonder if 3G bandwidth isn't cheaper than that. Just goes to show that they aren't doing this in order to offer everyone a good service, but rather to punish and blackmail moderate users into buying a higher tier subscription service.
The CRTC’s mandate is to ensure that both the broadcasting and telecommunications systems serve the Canadian public.
The CRTC is owned by Bell and Rogers. That is all.
No surprise, coming from Rogers.
That sucks! Maybe Netflix should offer lower quality, smaller files, while you Canadians get up and raise holy hell about the lack of competition for internet access, even if that means the government should offer some.
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
I can understand limits on consumer lines. You can have fast and cheap, but not all the time if you want fast all the time it costs more. Ok, but that still needs to be a reasonable amount. The 250GB cap Comcast does is quite reasonable. That's enough to do a whole lot and never get near it. Mainly the compulsive torrenters are the ones affected. But 15GB? That is just stupidly low. You can hit that without Netflix. Surf the web regularly, watch Youtube, download some game patches and you are there.
Talk about unreasonable :P.
Contemplate the Rogers logo: Powerful red sphincter muscles, and you; the white square in the middle.
Why don't ISPs bill home users by the amount of bandwidth used so the users don't pay for the bandwidth they don't use? you could also add a connection fee to the bill as well. They could offer speed tiers for the users so the faster the connection, the more expensive the amount per GB.
Time to jump ship by the looks of things. Best vote with your choice of ISP.
Those who can, do. Those who cannot, sue.
The key is to have any easy way for users to monitor usage, so they can cut back, or get ready to pay more. Also important, is making the process of paying more a pleasant experience. No, you are not "punishing" the customer for using your service too much. In fact, you want to reward them by offering them an upgrade to a plan with a higher allowance, at a substantial discount over the "a la carte" overlimit charge. And, you should find the increased gross revenue rewarding enough to invest in equipment, cables, and peering to keep customers ever expanding bandwidth hunger fed, and your cash flow flowing.
Less important, but nice, is to honor QoS tags from the customer, not you, so that with a smart router (or linux box), they can watch a high def movie (high bandwidth), while chatting on VOIP (low latency), and downloading the entire 50G Fedora distro (batch).
We buy a raw 100Mbit/100Mbit Internet connection with guarantied bandwidth for 1300 US$/month. We haven't renegotiated that price in a while, but I hear that bandwidth prices have been falling very fast since then. A big ISP would probably get bandwidth cheaper still.
Our current price works out to 25GB/$ if we use it 100% 24/7. So if you are paying more than 15/25=60cents for our Internet connection limited to 15GB/month, then you are being cheated.
I really don't get why Internet connection limits are so often so low. The fraction of the price you pay which actually goes to cover Internet bandwidth costs in a normal Internet connection is miniscule.
This is just the opening shot in the upcoming battle between cable providers that want you to use *their* on-demand movie systems vs Netflix and similar companies. It's not surprising it happened with Rogers first, but this will inevitably happen in the US too. Netflix's streaming of movies is the residential ISP's worst nightmare come true. They'll be in a position where they have to tell their customers that something they used to be able to do for no additional cost will suddenly become a new confusing expense showing up on their cable bill with no apparent additional benefit to the customer.
And the only reason it can get away with this is its DSL competitor is BELL and they collude to offer worse services at higher prices...
Never been a better time to go with teksavvy as an ISP and get real service tho bell still abuses their customers by illegally traffic shaping another companies traffic against their will..
Problem with monopolies when some other entity dips into their cash flow they find a way to get it from somewhere else . That somewhere else is normally the customers they have a strangle hold on. does Canada have anti trust laws? if so this seems like an ideal time to hold their feet to the fire
no matter how good it is, it is human nature always wants to make things better
I switched to Teksavvy Cable a month ago and it's awesome. No throttling, 200GB cap, and 10/1 speeds for $42. You can't match that with any other provider in Toronto.
This is obviously abusing a semi-monopoly to conduct price gouging, and the government should intervene.
Typical prices ISPs will pay for is the mere one-time cost of network equipment plus ~$25/Megabit/Mo, for a commitment to transfer data, the price is typically the same no matter how much data's transferred as long as the 95th-percentile traffic rate's not over the commit (95th percentile billing on a burstable link), otherwise known as $25,000/month per gigabit.
Sometimes an ISP might buy more bandwidth at different times of the day than others, but, in any case, they would do that because the cost is less, not more than the typical market rates.
Over a 1000Mbps backhaul, approximately 800 customers can be downloading 1 Megabit continuously 24/7, at an approximate avg cost to the ISP of $3125 per customer for that data, but in that case, 324000MB is transferred per customer on avg per month, resulting that each Megabyte transferred costs the ISP approximately $0.009 per megabyte.
Web hosting providers will typically charge $0.15 to $0.80 per GB per month on average.
Roger's "overage pricing" is like 4X the rate charged by even the most greedy of hosting providers.
Why is it that ISPs (and cell phone carriers) seem to ignore economies of scale? Its expensive to lay cable as a small ISP but when you get larger and larger it becomes cheaper thus bandwidth becomes cheaper. It is even more obvious when it comes to cell carriers, it costs a lot of money to put up a tower, it costs significantly less to upgrade that tower to 3G/4G, etc.
Not to mention that the more people who have the ISP the more profit the ISP makes thus making it even easier to lay more cables and increase bandwidth.
The bigger the company, the cheaper the services and the better the quality of service should be based on economies of scale.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
At the same time, they are pushing their Rogers on Demand service to all their customers too. http://www.rogersondemand.com/
Which means either charging people to watch TV content by 'downloading' it, or maybe, will they give a break to people who are on their network to use their service?
This is precisely why net neutrality is important and required.
People in Toronto are simply apathetic to this kind of thing. I'm guessing it's because they are used to paying such exorbitant cell phone bills.
I am a Rogers customer. I like the speed and latency (Express plan), but hate the bandwidth cap. Normally, I don't go over it, but occasionally do so.
Here is a matrix of their plans.
Two plans changed for new clients signing up after July 21: Lite and Extreme. Lite is what the summary describes. Extreme was 95GB for $60 a month, now it is 80GB.
They want to make money in two ways: via their own video service, and by charging extra for bandwidth that people will use for Netflix.
2bits.com, Inc: Drupal, WordPress, and LAMP performance tuning.
Rogers is also a cable provider and also provides its own On-Demand service for movies. Maybe reducing bandwidth limits on its accounts is a way to maintain profit from those customers who will be utilizing Netflix rather than Rogers On-Demand.
$50CDN/month for unlimited Internet at cable speeds? Sounds fair.
Actually, you're right. If I download hundreds of gigs, or a terabyte or two, I'll come out way ahead... Unfortunately, I don't expect the price cap to remain for long.
I'm all for making the ISPs a public utility. It might be the only way to turn them into what they should be.. a pipe, just like the gas and lights.
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
You failed to mention that Rogers Video is one of the largest chains of movie rental shops in Canada. That's what makes this an especially weird coincidence.
At one point, I couldn't get a cell phone from Rogers the telco, apparently because I owed some late fees to Rogers the movie rental shop, which I could only pay at the movie shop. So I went with another telco. Weird, anyway; I hadn't realized they were all so tightly connected.
Consumer protection is virtually non-existent in Canada. The CRTC is a spineless puppet entity, solely to serve big business. Cable providers are mutually exclusive across Canada as far as I know, meaning only one exists per territory. Bandwidth caps, as you can see, are draconian, UBB (usage-based billing) is ridiculous. The list goes on and on...
I just switched from SHAW to NakedADSL and get 200 gigs up and down while SHAW was 60. Now I haver had problems with SHAW contacting me about going over BUT but bit torrent even for linux distro's is useless on SHAW. The NakedADSl although not as fast download as SHAW never had a problem with bit torrent so far.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
i thought prices are supposed to go DOWN over time?
I know why you were modded troll. That $50CDN/month is IN ADDITION to the regular service rates.
"His name was James Damore."
Cheap tactics used keep netflix from taking customers from their VOD services....
ISPs don't owe you anything you haven't paid for at the price they are willing to sell to you. Nor do they owe it to Netflix to deliver their content.
The issue is you haven't got a choice. Well, you've got Bell or Rogers, but both have monopolies on their respective cables, and any competition is buying bandwidth from them. Ultimately, they set the rules no matter your ISP.
If you want IP service to be a utility where the public helps set the rates then get your local government to provide it under a public utility district or something.
I'd like a pony, too. By what magic wand should this happen? The best case would be the local gov't leases from the Big Two, just like all the other middle-man ISPs. If you think a local-level government has any leverage or regulating ability over Bell or Rogers, then you're remarkably naive.
Rogers not only has bandwidth concerns. They also operate a chain of movie rental stores. Netflix poses a dual threat to Rogers.
...just like the gas and lights. Which are metered service. It still comes down to paying enough for what you use to keep the infrastructure operational. How the costs of that service are spread out to the users is the question. Quite often metering is the fairest way.
Oddly, where I live (Indian County) I pay a flat rate for water/sewer. The infrastructure is just getting installed to meter. I think I pay more than I should, and I may be. We'll find out when the meters and the billing software gets updated.
-- I have a private email server in my basement.
Call me when running a gas generator (ie: Doing it yourself) costs about 2% of buying electricity from the utility. Because that's what the current pricing is like.
Utilities charge a reasonable amount. It is never cheaper to run a generator than to purchase the power from the utility, assuming the lines are already run (And if you want Rogers cable in Canada and don't have the lines, they will bill about $25,000 to wire up a neighbourhood [or your house, I suppose], too).
If they start metering, then I'll want any and all unwanted advertising to subsidize my connection. That's why I think it shouldn't happen, because we'll still be dealing with content regulation. A flat fee for a set speed is the best way. Charging for bit rates is the fairest way, not the number of bits.
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
(sorry for length, hope this might be helpful, probably overstaing obvious, anyways.....)
I don't want to bash Rogers, they paid me a good salary and I had a great experience working there many years ago.
I'm far removed from the company now, but I *think* and it appears marketing/management strategy remains unchanged.
My experience though in sales has been that the marketing and upper management has some strange way of making promotions and changing products for better (and unfortunately) worse. Most of the promotions are pretty positive and get a lot of new customers and sales for cable, PPV, specialty channels and Internet. This new download cap probably won't be a problem since most customers don't use or understand the Internet much. I'll bet most are just check e-mail and news and won't even use close to 15 GB. I'd be more concerned if I were a parent. Kids with an XBox 360 or PS3, what with downloading patches, playing online, demos and Torrent, Netflix, Youtube, blah blah blah. The parents don't use the net much, but the kids you can't control and the kids and parents probably don't realize how much is being downloaded.
I makes no sense to me that it would cost the ISP (Rogers) more for bandwidth as time goes on. I would think bandwidth costs would decrease and extra services like mail servers (a lot use Gmail, hotmail), news servers are no more, and I would think less people have 'homepages'.
Rogers is not unlike Bell, Shaw and to the US neighbors AT&T and Sprint etc in that they like any company wanting to make a profit and draw people away from competitors. Bell also has TV/Satellite offerings. So given industry trends, I won't be surprised if this bandwidth change is directly related to a conflict of interest, one they know the CRTC won't touch or are too slow to move.
I live in Vancouver, so I've also the opportunity as with Ontario and Quebec residents, to be a TekSavvy customer. It costs me more with a dry line, but well worth escaping the Telus or Shaw. Bonus - they are more than generous with bandwidth. I'm happy with service - as long as Telus doesn't start pissing me off by trying to get the useless CRTC to cap non Telus DSL subscribers on their loop. As taxpayers, we've more than subsided the Ma Bells - to the point these should probably be considered public infrastructure.
You still have national elections there, right?
I never said it was going to be easy. I remember sneaking a partial T1 into Canada to a cable provider back in '95 (they had one customer on the US side, north of Spokane, and they back hauled it via the cable system.) just to get around the horrid telco T1 rates.
Canada is going to have to have a Internet Revolution and overhaul Rogers/Bell. I'm surprised you've put up with them for this long.
-- I have a private email server in my basement.
Get your neighbors together in your building. Propose a plan after checking with ISPs. Tell them you want business class service, and how much it is. Then split that with your neighbors. This might be fiber. It might not.
AT&T did something like this with there data plans after Nextflix arrived. Every company knows netflix is high bandwidth so they shrink or cap people to make money. Wonder if nextflix is in on all this.
http://www.thetechnologygeek.org
The situation in Canada sucks. Bell and Rogers do whatever they want and the CRTC goes along with it.
Oh, well, I don't have cable TV or Internet, but I do have cell phone service through Rogers. Time to jump ship to Wind Mobile, I think...
So now mistakes in reading TFS is trolling? My, my, someone didn't get laid last night.
-- I have a private email server in my basement.
Sorry, but you are a power user. What you describe is VERY heavy usage. I don't tend to hit 250gb and I run servers on my line. Nothing wrong with that, you just have to appreciate that means you need to pay a bit more. Get yourself a business class line. That's what I do. Does cost a bit more, but they don't cap it you can get static IPs, servers are fine, you tend to get your full bandwidth (they usually run them on a different channel) and so on. If you are a power user, it is well worth the extra cost.
You cannot have a high speed, cheap, completely unlimited line. They would either have to cap the speeds lower, or they'd end up being lower because people would hit it hard. Only way to maintain high speeds at a low cost is sharing.
Works just like your office. Build a gig Ethernet network with gig to the desktop, gig switch uplinks, gig to the servers, etc and you find that it is nice and fast, and pretty cheap to do. So long as people share, you actually tend to get near your full gig all the time. However if everyone slams the servers all the time, you need more bandwidth. That means more expensive switches, servers, etc. The cost goes up a whole lot.
Remember, they cap their overage charges at $50. So, the max you can pay with this is around $86/month (the "Lite" plan is $36/month). That's around $83USD.
:-)
For comparison, the Extreme Plus plan is about what I'm paying in the US for Comcast, at $70/month. That offers 125GB of transfer per month, or half the Comcast cap. Of course, it also offers 25mbps download and 1mbps upload, which is better than the 16mbps and 876kbps I get.
But what happens if I go over my 250GB cap? Comcast seems to be saying they'll provide you a warning if you do it once, and will shut you off if you do it regularly. I'd rather pay $4/GB if I go over, up to a cap of $50, than just be cut off. It doesn't seem completely unreasonable to me... Sure, I pay less per GB at my hosting facility, but I'm sure if I was giving Comcast thousands of dollars per month they'd move on that $4/GB as well.
I agree, but you may not like the delivered price. You can get b/w cheap at a peering point, but getting that to your home at the guaranteed bit-rate is not cheap. I know that the cost of last mile circuits in Canada is horrendous and that is where the reform really needs to start: Bell.
I live in the Seattle area and know that we host a lot of BC firms just because of that.
-- I have a private email server in my basement.
I remember a time when I was dead envious on my friends in North America for having flat-rate modem connections in the early 90s.
Now technology have improved a lot since then, but the price and service level for them and myself somehow got reversed. While my ISP have continued to lower the price when the number of users increase, practically nothing has changed for my friends. On top of this every time I ask about the monthly cap they seem to be more concerned about size of it rather than it's very existence.
How the hell did the service get worse when the number of users increased?!
Most of North America seems to somehow gotten used to living with these crappy connections not improving in any other way than an occasional speed increase. I find it hard to believe that caps are necessary to be able to make profit.
For reference I now have a 100Mbit full duplex connection for $20 a month. No caps, no usage limits.
i used to be with rogers. switched to teksavvy... never looked back.
cable isn't all that if they are capping and gouging like they are.
take a look at teksavvy and acanac that i know of.
As a Canadian, I'm getting tired of all this hand waving. I can safely safe this doesn't, and hasn't ever effected me. Probably never will, because I don't think Rogers even sells conventional internet west of Ontario. Basically all the internet problems are in eastern Canada. Possibly not even the east coast, but i'm not sure on that. Apparently all of Canada is Ontario still. People forget that the distance between Vancouver and Toronto is 150% the distance between London and Moscow.
On the west cost I get ~18Mbit for $30 a month. I could get faster if I wanted, but I feel no need at this point. I also apparently have a data cap, but I haven't hit it, it's not enforced, and wasn't told of it's existance. I don't get throttled, and I have free a.b. access on usenet if I were that type of person. In fact, just recently one of the major ISPs here upgraded their network in my area to fiber so that only thing that isn't now is the last mile. So while I don't have a fiber connection yet depending on how the other major ISP in the area responds, I bet it's not that far off.
If the bit rate can be measured accurately, you could be charged for whatever it is averaged out over the month. Then they wouldn't have to guarantee a set rate, unless you want to pay for one. The last mile is where the government is most needed to compete against the private firms. Only then could the price become reasonable. Heh, just like American health insurance. (couldn't help taking the pot shot there)
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
Besides being a troll, you are an idiot. You can watch 320x240 youtube videos on a .5Mb connection, let alone 1.5.
Dialup is 56Kb, or about 3.5 % of your 1500Kb (you did intend Kb, not kb, right?) example speed. Hardly just 'glorified dialup'.
As well, Telus offers much higher DSL speeds in just about every city in the country.
So maybe you should get off your high horse and go ask Mommy for more money for a higher speed connection.
Please, take a shot at our health-care, although we are finally seeing some positive movement there.
You often buy IP by the 95/5 rule, meter every 5 minutes and then throw out the top 5% of peaks and bill at the 95% point. That keeps quick flashes of very high traffic from killing you.
But buying a last mile circuit like an OC-3 or T3 you'll be paying for the whole thing all the time (renting a pipe.) Metro Ethernet networks (MAN) can be billed either way, depends on what the market will tolerate.
-- I have a private email server in my basement.
Yes, and defending the person gets modded flamebait.
"His name was James Damore."
I feel sorry for all Canadians, seems like things over there aren't any better than in the US.
In comparison, I currently have a 200/10 Mbit/s cable connection (yes, 200) for 54,90 € per month. There are no transfer caps, no noticable speed fluctuations and practically no downtime at all.
That's just cable. I could easily get an unlimited 14.4 Mbit/s 3G connection for just 13,90€ per month. That includes two SIM cards (one for your phone) and a USB modem.
God bless Finland!
Toll roads bill based on how far you go! At the least the ticket based ones do the other ones are gate based so the rate is not the same all over the same systems.
Bruce must have mod points.
-- I have a private email server in my basement.
I admit that I am a power user. My point was that I can hit the 250GB cap alone, without netflix and without illegal torrent downloads. If I can do it alone without netflix; a family can easily hit the cap and exceed it when you add in multiple people accessing the internet at the same time especially if you have multiple people streaming movies. That is why the cap is unreasonable.
My other point was that in the future we will demand bandwidth in ever increasing amounts yet the caps will hold us back. Looking back at the history of computers, my first computer had 5k of ram. Then 64k, 128k... My first PC had 512k which was less then the 640k max. Now I type this on a laptop with 4GB. (And yes as a power user it is not unusual to get to the point of hitting the swap partition.) Media was the same way, from 360k floppies to 1.4mb, 640mb cds, 4.3gb dvds, and now we are at the point of 50GB blu-rays. And sometimes (especially with games) we get to the point that we need multiple disks. No one dreamed of using all this memory and storage just a few years ago... Why do you think bandwidth that is barely adequate today will be sufficient tomorrow?
As for why I am complaining, it is simple... Once the infrastructure is built, it does not cost more to transmit 2MB over the network than it does to send 1MB. Companies advertise an "# Mbps" connection for a certain price and then overcharge us if we actually use it. Also, here in the US, we have literally given BILLIONS of dollars to the telecommunication companies to build out the network(through government subsidies and tax breaks); yet our access is more expensive and slower than many other industrialized nations. All this while the executives are complaining that they are losing money while getting multi-million dollar bonuses. (And when Time Warner announced it was testing smaller caps a year ago, people found out through their earnings reports that their internet division was raking in the dough without caps, and while barely putting any money into improving the infrastructure.)
Looking for a job?
Want your resume written professionally?
DON'T USE TUNAREZ!!!
Here in Australia, many ISP's charge 10 cents a megabyte, which turns out to be 100 dollars freaking gigaybyte. It's done so that it is cheaper to upgrade to the next plan than pay $300 dollars for a couple of Youtube videos.
Not to take the side of the cable company, but the Lite service is the second from the bottom in terms of cost. It's not meant for the high-end bandwidth consumer. As the site says, that service is stated to be "Perfect for email, moderate web surfing, and sharing files." It's 3M/256k with a 15 gig monthly limit. However, if you plan to download several movies a day, this clearly isn't going to be enough for you. Thankfully, the company offers OTHER service options. The Ultimate plan, has 50/2 and a 175 gig limit, with only 50 cents per additional gig. Of course, you'll pay more for that plan, but I don't think anyone was seriously thinking that the second cheapest service plan should have completely unlimited bandwidth.
And if the ultimate plan isn't enough for you, there are business plans available which will offer even more, although it's likely going to cost more and the plans apparently aren't available to view on the site. But this is pretty typical for a cable company. I'm not sure what the complaint is supposed to be.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
From what I can see, Bell with its Bell TV satelite service has a lot to loose to Netflix as their Pay-Per-View @ 5.99$/film may suffer from Netflix's streaming (if available here) and could opt for a similar strategy and lower their monthly quota on their DSL access.
Videotron wich is a major cable operator and ISP and also the major owner/operator of video clubs is owned by Quebecor Media which also operate Archambault Music who sells DVDs. They, also, have a lot to loose to Netflix and may lower their monthly quota.
My plan with them was originaly unlimited and then they lowered it to 100gb/month so what's next?
Ted Stevens was wrong - THE INTERNET IS NOT A SERIES OF TUBES. Metering physical things that run through physical pipes is one thing - even water requires treatment, pumping, etc and thus has a logical cost per unit. Data doesn't.
if you gave them free Internet, they'd complain, saying you should be paying them to use it ...
The Internet's nature is peer to peer - 20050301_cs_profs.pdf
I kind of agree. You can't get blood out of stone. Bandwidth costs money. Net neutrality is the reason for these knee-jerk actions by ISPs.
Kriston
First, it was 60GB limit, then it became 25GB limit, and now they are going to downgrade it to 15GB? WTF? Btw, i did switch to teksavvy, with lower price, and with the surprising 200GB limit, lol. And you, ROGERS, you just go to hell. And just one interesting gossip, the actual price for unlimited access is actually $19/month. Rogers Lite will cost you over $40/month (because of some "extras" and don't forget the new HST=13%)
My understanding is that both Rogers and Bell are also trying to persuade the CRTC to government regulated download limits of 60 GB for all ISPs. This of course would allow them to protect themselves from customers going to another ISP.
Also, before shrinking download limits, they've also doubled overlimit fees.
They've began to offer on ad supported on-demand video online, except this "free" video is still subject to their usage limits.
This plan went gone from a 60 GB cap to a 25 GB in March (no price changes,) and now it has changed again to 15 GB (no price change.)
So in four months they've quadrupled the price of bandwidth for that plan.
As if that wasn't bad enough, you cannot buy bandwidth allocations separately (like the $10/100GB blocks teksavvy offer.)
Coupled with the axe that is looming above our heads which is Bill C-32, this country is slowly going back to the stone age.
What's funny is bandwidth prices have dropped dramatically for service providers.
I pay for colo space on a few machines, they keep offering me more bandwidth at the same price. I get 10x what I did 8 years ago for a slightly lower price.
Sure there are some different economies for a last mile provider. But the trend for technology and networking is for the prices to go down, and I'm convinced cable and DSL companies are paying a lower price than they did a few years ago.
Honestly these companies have had it too easy. They would offer some service and bandwidth, and there was no content for people to download so the bandwidth went unused while customers still paid full price. Now that there are things with wide appeal like hulu, youtube hd, netflix, whatever. These companies are seeing their networks actually being used and feel they need some sort of compensation for it beyond what they have already been getting.
They got paid for nothing for many years, now that they are doing something they want to get paid more.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
A few years back, I had "up to 5M" service and "up to 10M" was offered for additional money or if you had a bundle. When I moved, I got the bundle and therefore got the "up to 10M" service. But my previous "up to 5M" service was faster than my new "up to 10M" service. Key words: "up to". It's always been a rip-off!
Can anyone out here explain exactly how the isps control our download speeds? I have comcast at 6 megs, but know they also sell faster and slower services. (Att is the same way... multiple speeds available over the same wires) Some say they also throttle back the speed if they don't like what you are downloading. I'd sure like to know exactly how they do it. Water is easy... crank on the valve. Audio is easy, crank on the volume control. but internet speed?? I need some help here, please.
There are cities in the US and elsewhere that are sick of the Telcos
Charging huge rates so they can make mega bucks for their mega mansions
and stock options.
Do a Co-op ISP and buy up dark fiber as a not for profit between cities.
Then treat it like a Co-op or even city owned util and move on.
The Telcos have shown they are ALMOST as corrupt as the Federal Government.
http://www.tispa.org/node/14
They had to work hard to be that corrupt, LOL !
google "32 trillion offshore needs IRS attention"
This is why we need net neutrality. What does anyone expect from a business that also provides content in the face of competition? The net needs to be treated like a utility. Content providers need to compete on content. Not access.
I pay 46 $CAD per month for 100/100 with no cap, you are being cheated..
Who do you get that with???