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User: nibben

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  1. Transfer limits are not that bad on ISPs Experiment With Broadband Download Capping · · Score: 2, Informative

    At my company we have a special kind of broadband subscription for people who are tired of the disturbance caused by the others peoples carelessness about their internet usage.

    We call it a "broadband transfer subscription". It basically means that each customer gets a fixed amount of data (download/upload combined) that they can use for whatever they wish to, at full speed, no bandwidth cap on file sharing software or such.
    We usually set the limit to 10GB data transfer per month.
    The customer can log in to their personal account any time and have a look at their counter, see bandwidth graphs, etc.

    After this limit has been reached (Which really does not happen that often) the users bandwidth gets throttled down to a low (but still usable, think ISDN) speed.
    They can then choose to wait until the next period when their counters will be reset, or log on to their personal account and buy another set of data, which will be billed together with their normal bill. The bandwidth cap gets removed instantly and they can go ahead and do whatever they like to do, and they do not have to worry about their internet connection being slow like syrup because their neighbors left their machines online with some file sharing app clogging the network.

    Whenever they want to download something, surf somewhere or tune in some music/video-stream, they can do that at full speed (via 100Mbit fibre/ethernet, 11Mbit WiFi or whatever they are using) without interruption. And at a very low price.

    The average internet user seems pretty happy with this, especially those who just use the 'net for surfing/mailing/chatting/gaming.

    If the customer on the other hand prefers to leech movies 24/7 he can use the normal subscription and get a capped bandwidth which he shares with his neighbors.
    But frankly, we would not be sorry to see him go, because there is no chance that we can make this customer happy in consideration of price, bandwidth and stability without losing money.