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ISP Trying Free (But Limited) Home Broadband Plan

Posted by Soulskill on from the market-pressure-on-the-big-boys dept.

adeelarshad82 writes "Earlier today FreedomPop, a telecom company headquartered in Los Angeles, announced its plans to launch a very low cost home broadband plan for extremely low-intensity users, with 1GB monthly for free. Clearly this is much lower than an average U.S. home broadband usage, which is between 24 and 28 gigs per month. The 1GB of free Internet is basically a teaser; the company aims to disrupt the cable and DSL business with its 10GB for $10 plan which is extendable by paying $5 for each additional GB beyond 10."

6 of 213 comments (clear)

  1. Attacks on bandwidth caps are shortsighted by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Remember when everybody was screaming about bandwidth caps and the need for government to regulate them out of existence?

    This is why that regulation was a bad idea.

    1GB/free and 10GB/$10 is highly disruptive to the major cable cartel. It is also extraordinarily beneficial for low income or student subscribers. This is innovation. We need more competition, not more regulations treating the symptoms of the lack of competition in most markets.

    1. Re:Attacks on bandwidth caps are shortsighted by PhxBlue · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Highly disruptive. Sure. Whatever.

      Given my bandwidth usage, I'd have to pay about $1,000 a month to get what I have now for about $70. I'm not seeing what's "highly disruptive" about that.

      --
      !#@%*)anks for hanging up the phone, dear.
    2. Re:Attacks on bandwidth caps are shortsighted by alen · · Score: 4, Insightful

      yeah, but lots of people like my inlaws who don't use too much will jump on this if it costs them $20 or $30 a month

      if i use less than 1GB per month on my iphone i'm sure there are lots of people who use the same on their home internet

  2. Model cycling by nycsubway · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Hopefully the home ISP market won't follow the cyclic model of the cell phone industry. With cell phone data, first you paid by the kB, then they introduced unlimited data plans, then they capped the limits and you paid by the GB, now they're going back to unlimited data plans. I'd prefer the home ISPs to not do that. They've always been unlimited (within reason) so I'd wouldn't like to see some small company changing the model for the industry.

    --
    http://github.com/gbook/nidb
  3. Re:Not Cheaper by localman57 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    You'd want to be careful about auto-updates of software, though. Adding a new (to you) computer with a pre -SP3 fresh reinstall of winodws XP (something resonable to happen for people in this market) would eat up stubstantial bandwidth as it downloaded updates.

  4. Opt-In Cap Limits by MatrixCubed · · Score: 3, Insightful

    If they're implementing cap-excess fees, they should also enable the user to hard-limit his internet access when the cap is reached, with a manual bypass when the user wishes to "accept the charges".

    My ISP (Rogers, up here in Canada) offers soft-cap notifications in your browser when the cap reaches 75% and 100%, but these notifications would never be seen if I, for example, were to Netflix my Gbs into oblivion.