Proposed Internet Usage Limitations

[Darth Wong]

Precisely what is so outrageous about this? They offer a service and the costs of offering that service scale with usage, but their current billing plan totally disregards usage per customer. In effect, some customers get vastly more value for money than others.

Could someone explain to me the moral outrage in remedying this situation?

[Darth Wong]

Wouldn't it be more practical to just increase the amount of the bill for everyone slightly to cover infrastructure improvements instead of introducing some sort of lame artificial bandwidth cap? This reeks of trying to curb file-sharing while hitting legitimate high-bandwidth users too.

I seriously doubt they would actually cut you off if you exceed the bandwidth; they would just charge you extra.

[Einhander Sn0m4n]

Precisely what is so outrageous about this? They offer a service and the costs of offering that service scale with usage, but their current billing plan totally disregards usage per customer. In effect, some customers get vastly more value for money than others.

Could someone explain to me the moral outrage in remedying this situation?

There is no outrage, really. I'm surprised per-gigabyte pricing hasn't already been implemented. I just don't want these things to end up de facto censorship tools.

[Spin Echo]

Precisely what is so outrageous about this? They offer a service and the costs of offering that service scale with usage, but their current billing plan totally disregards usage per customer. In effect, some customers get vastly more value for money than others.

In theory, the caps aren't an issue. While I'd like to be proven wrong, dollars to donuts the implementation will be just as bad as it is in New Zealand, where they make shit up about your internet usage or randomly drop you down to dialup for no apparent reason. You then spend hours on the phone to try to complain only to fail to ever reach an actual person.

Yeah, this could be done well, but why bother when they can make money off of you buy not doing so?

[Mr Bean]

Wouldn't it be more practical to just increase the amount of the bill for everyone slightly to cover infrastructure improvements instead of introducing some sort of lame artificial bandwidth cap? This reeks of trying to curb file-sharing while hitting legitimate high-bandwidth users too.

I seriously doubt they would actually cut you off if you exceed the bandwidth; they would just charge you extra.

The issue is however the pricing, as it stands now the local bandwidth costs around here are 30 dollars an hour for unlimited 2meg/256k up. With a higher business class 4.5meg/1meg up available for 60$ a month.

I don't believe for a second they will offer 5/gig plans at 19.99 or 25.99. So likley what will happen is everyone who uses the intertubes for something other than the "email" will be forced to pay the 60$ rate or whatever rate they come up with for the 20+ gig plan.

Let me give you a good example of how bad the 5gig cap is
If you use netflix to download/stream any movie your at or near the cap, so one netflix a month. If it's HD video your over the cap.

If you use STEAM or Direct to drive to download any of the major video game titles your at the cap.

Give you a good example to download Neverwinter Nights 2, and patch it all the way up to 1.2 is 5.3 gigs worth of information. I'm at the cap to play a single videogame.

World of Warcraft players? Most major patchs weigh in close to a gig or more.

The 5 gig limit is far to little for any user who does nothing but "the email" but far to much for anyone who justs emails kids pictures. I'm pretty sure such people could get by on 2 gigs a month.

The issue as I see it, it's the caps absurdly small size and the stepup in price between them. I lived someplace I was getting charged 50$ for 768/128k cable service. I've lived places I got charge 250$ for 256k/256k service.

The internet is growing in leaps and bounds, digital distribution, online video content, legitimate peer to peer and yes video games require more and more bandwidth. Capping the internet aims to still-birth this new content, no one wants to pay 5$ to their ISP on top of the online rental fee they just payed for their latest movie.

[Alyrium Denryle]

Precisely what is so outrageous about this? They offer a service and the costs of offering that service scale with usage, but their current billing plan totally disregards usage per customer. In effect, some customers get vastly more value for money than others.

Could someone explain to me the moral outrage in remedying this situation?

Part of it is that they are doing it ostensibly because 5% of users use up 50% of their capacity, capacity which they could have, but have not, upgraded.

[Boyish-Tigerlilly]

I apologize for the double post.

I don't get the poll in this thread? "Yes, No, Would choose something else"?
Wait, how does "No" and "Would choose something else" differ? Isn't the very fact that you'd choose something else a hint that you don't think it's a good idea?

Thanks for mentioning that. I should clarify.

1. Yes means you support the measures mentioned in the article.
2. No, means you do not at all support such measures.
3. Other option means you would do something else, but do support similar measures.

Crappy wording.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Notice it's only Cable companies do this, because the cable architecture means that bandwidth is shared between a large number of users. I've never used cable internet, and never will--DSL is much better, anyway, and we can get some pretty bloody fast DSL in the PacNorWest if Amy and I wanted it (It would be at 3 Mbps/768 Kbps for thirty bucks a month), though right now we're on wireless from Clearwire, anyway. So just ditch your cable internet if you have a problem with these limits?

This isn't about introducing an entire tiered structure to the internet, that's an entirely different debate. This is about changing the structure of pricing on cable because the cable infrastructure is not capable of handling extensive bandwidth.

[General Zod]

Notice it's only Cable companies do this, because the cable architecture means that bandwidth is shared between a large number of users. I've never used cable internet, and never will--DSL is much better, anyway, and we can get some pretty bloody fast DSL in the PacNorWest if Amy and I wanted it (It would be at 3 Mbps/768 Kbps for thirty bucks a month), though right now we're on wireless from Clearwire, anyway. So just ditch your cable internet if you have a problem with these limits?

DSL has its own host of problems though, most notably being that if the phoneline infrastructure of the building you're in is rather poor, you'll be getting speeds equivalent to dialup no matter what DSL service you subscribe to. In some cases a lot of apartment buildings are only wired for one service or the other, which can make switching needlessly difficult if not impossible. This of course is ignoring the fact that even under optimal circumstances, you usually only have one or two providers, sometimes three to choose from in a given city if you're lucky. So switching isn't really practical or even doable for a lot of people.

[Bounty]

Notice it's only Cable companies do this, because the cable architecture means that bandwidth is shared between a large number of users.

Can a techie confirm this? because I'm sitting here with my capped ADSL and find it very hard to believe that there's no reason for it.

[Yogi]

The real problem with this is the lack of competition. If I had companies to choose from, I'd go with one that offered unlimited bandwith, unless the "pay per gigabyte" option is reasonably priced. However, with the lack of competition, any new pricing scheme is just another way of screwing us over.

[MichaelFerrariF1]

In the UT dorms I was rationed to 8 gigs a week of DSL before being downgraded to dial up. I never exceeded that limit and 8 gigs gets a lot of Youtube, Top Gear, and Family Guy.

[phongn]

Notice it's only Cable companies do this, because the cable architecture means that bandwidth is shared between a large number of users.

(snip)

This isn't about introducing an entire tiered structure to the internet, that's an entirely different debate. This is about changing the structure of pricing on cable because the cable infrastructure is not capable of handling extensive bandwidth.

That's not necessarily true. All modern cable internet infrastructure relies on very-high speed fibre lines running to a neighborhood (or apartment complex, or subdivision, etc.) where it is then converted into the coaxial RF signal serving some number of users. The switch to fully digital cable systems will increase the available bandwidth for non-television services as well as any eventual switch to more sophisticated signaling protocols such as DOCSIS 3.

All forms of DSL have the copper feeding into a DSL Access Mux (DSLAM), which is then fed (usually) by its own fibre line - not dissimilar to cable. While in this case every user has their own line downstream of the DSLAM (as opposed to cable, where entire neighborhoods share one copper signal).

Even fibre architectures (AT&T's FTTN and Verizon's FTTP systems) have this bottleneck.

In both cases, the real limiting factor is the uplink from the DSLAM or the cable headend to the Internet-at-large, and that's where the congestion is taking place.

Part of it is that they are doing it ostensibly because 5% of users use up 50% of their capacity, capacity which they could have, but have not, upgraded.

This is not an either-or proposition. All telecoms, cable companies and backbone providers have continuously been upgrading their physical plant and line capacity. In some cases (like AT&T and Verizon) they are spending a fortune doing so. Skyrocketing growth in Internet access is still causing congestion, especially on the part of power users.

[bilateralrope]

so where would someone playing online games fit in here? say XBOX live or something like that... would that affect those people too?

The current infrastructure can't handle the amount of bandwidth people are using, so how would you reduce peoples usage ?

- Trying to stop people using the high bandwidth services. But this has problems with false alarms (like Comcast blocking Lotus Notes), people writing the programs to not get caught (which may add overhead), people finding another high-bandwidth program you haven't heard of, people questioning the legality of your filtering system.

Or

- Keep track of how much bandwidth everyone uses. Then only hit the people who go over a specific amount.

[Graeme Dice]

If bandwidth is at a premium, why not charge those who use it more?

The problem is the the telecommunications companies make ridiculous amounts of money off of infrastructure that, in many places, was publically subsidized. They then turn around and complain that they can't continue to make oligopoly sized profits without upgrading their infrastructure.

[MKSheppard]

Precisely what is so outrageous about this?

The fact that they're setting it to just 20-30 gigs a month, which the casual user of the higher tier internet services offered by netflix, etc among other thigns can easily go over. If it was something more reasonable like 100 Gigs a month, there wouldn't be as much outrage, since that would be the equivalent of downloading 142~ movies in a single month.

[Darth Wong]

If bandwidth is at a premium, why not charge those who use it more?

The problem is the the telecommunications companies make ridiculous amounts of money off of infrastructure that, in many places, was publically subsidized. They then turn around and complain that they can't continue to make oligopoly sized profits without upgrading their infrastructure.

Irrelevant to the question of whether they should charge by the user or by the gigabyte. If they wanted to gouge the consumer, they could simply increase their rate either way. But charging by the gigabyte is more fair, regardless of what the actual rate is.

[Darth Wong]

Precisely what is so outrageous about this?

The fact that they're setting it to just 20-30 gigs a month, which the casual user of the higher tier internet services offered by netflix, etc among other thigns can easily go over. If it was something more reasonable like 100 Gigs a month, there wouldn't be as much outrage, since that would be the equivalent of downloading 142~ movies in a single month.

Why is there some ethical imperative to not charge the "casual user of the higher tier network services" more than those who do not use such services?

[Twoyboy]

Precisely what is so outrageous about this?

The fact that they're setting it to just 20-30 gigs a month, which the casual user of the higher tier internet services offered by netflix, etc among other thigns can easily go over. If it was something more reasonable like 100 Gigs a month, there wouldn't be as much outrage, since that would be the equivalent of downloading 142~ movies in a single month.

When shopping for a new broadband plan a couple of months ago, I think the highest cap I could find was 60GB, which cost about $120 a month. To tell you the truth, I didn't think ISPs worked any other way in other countries until you guys told me about how the US works. So maybe it's what I've been exposed to, but I don't see a problem with this.

I don't know what the "average user" that you know uses, but the only way I get anywhere near my 30GB limit is by downloading heaps of TV shows (and we have 3 adults in our house on the net). Without downloading of movies, TV or internet gaming, I would be hard pressed to think of too many people who would be racking up 20GB a month.

[Andrew_Fireborn]

Does anyone have the numbers on what online gaming types use in terms of bandwidth?

Somehow I can't see things like MMOs using much more than maybe a megabyte an hour (patches being a large exception... But other than Blizzard's almost weekly abortions, most MMOs don't update much more than once a quarter...)

FPS games I could see scaling wildly based on the number of players, the methods of hit detection, and the general net code quality... And of course, even here there're the one time investments of Mod installers and third party maps. The frequency of which depends entirely on the engine.

RTS games I could see also sucking up fair amounts of bandwidth, especially the larger scale ones towards their ends.


Still, it is their right to change their prices.

[General Zod]

Still, it is their right to change their prices.

On the other hand, when they have virtually no competition in the marketplace, you have to wonder whether they're abusing their position in adjusting the costs.

[SylasGaunt]

The ironic bit is that AOL/Time Warner was one of the people who got the whole unlimited usage thing going. AOL used to do charges based on how long you were online, and then started offering an unlimited use plan... which is what most people ended up buying.

[Winston Blake]

Precisely what is so outrageous about this?

Living in Australia, I can't see the problem. Like Twoyboy, I thought for a long time that all internet plans were capped as a matter of course.

The only harm I can see is that if access to high-bandwidth services becomes more expensive, then the users who are willing to pay will pay, but the rest will simply stop using those services. Any businesses (like those Shep mentions) that depend on customers making large downloads or having high-bandwidth will have their customer base suddenly shrunk. Having assumed that the current climate will continue, many planned and existing products would become unprofitable. Meat for the ISPs is poison for others.

I just had an idea: it would be more fair to tax people extra if they use the roads for anything more than light use, e.g. driving to work, school and the shops. I don't have a car, so it wouldn't bother me. However, it would piss a lot of other people off and greatly increase the costs of freight companies, for example. Hence 'outrage' despite greater fairness.

[MKSheppard]

Irrelevant to the question of whether they should charge by the user or by the gigabyte.

This conflicts with their marketing plans for high speed internet, which tout online streaming video etc etc as a reason to buy a package from them.

[Darth Wong]

Irrelevant to the question of whether they should charge by the user or by the gigabyte.

This conflicts with their marketing plans for high speed internet, which tout online streaming video etc etc as a reason to buy a package from them.

No it doesn't. I don't use more than 30 GB per month most of the time, but I still appreciate the ability to view video through a high-speed connection.