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Ask Slashdot: How Do You Fight Usage Caps?
First time accepted submitter SGT CAPSLOCK writes "It certainly seems like more and more Internet Service Providers are taking up arms to combat their customers when it comes to data usage policies. The latest member of the alliance is Mediacom here in my own part of Missouri, who has taken suit in applying a proverbial cork to their end of a tube in order to cap the bandwidth that their customers are able to use. My question: what do you do about it when every service provider in your area applies caps and other usage limitations? Do you shamefully abide, or do you fight it? And how?"
And how are your customers going to get transit to your datacenter? That's right, equipment in the exchange, cellular airtime or satellite airtime. None of which is free.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Yup, go for it and see if you can do better. Bandwidth costs money.
Based on the fact that there is never really any competitors, I think that's not it.
Physical access to customers is monopolized so that there is typically no competition.
I'm in the San Francisco Bay area, and the speeds here are the worst and the prices the highest of anywhere I've ever lived.
Sometimes I say that in response to people claiming it's more expensive in rural areas because the cost of infrastructure is higher than in populated areas.
Other times people tell me it's high here because there's a huge population and so more people to serve.
Here in the epicenter of the internet, internet service sucks, and everyone uses contradictory excuses for it.
The REALITY is that prices are high in the US because we have virtual monopolies and no regulation to speak of, and so capitalists do what capitalists do in those conditions:
They gouge.
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