Broadband Caps Question/Topic

[sharq]

EDIT: By caps here I mean the daily/monthly quota's put on usage. Example: Cable company XYZ says you can't utilize more than 1gb of traffic per day, or a total of 30gb per month, for the account/line. AKA the download limits.

Hi all,
I have seen alot of the cable company ad's for broadband internet (mostly I remember the comcast ones). They advertise that you get tv and internet on one line, on one bill. Ofcourse, they don't mention any limits, just say it's faster than dsl etc. The dsl ad's I see (bellsouth mostly) talk about how cheap you can get dsl for. The one thing I notice is that DSL ad's don't say that there are no caps on their service.
My question is, are dsl companies considering caps like quite a few cable companies have currently? Are there DSL companies that have caps already? I'm just wondering if DSL companies are considering it (I hope not), or if they have already done so. Basically why don't they advertise that fact? Or am I just not watching the right ad's?

 

[ThaGrandCow]

All broadband companies have caps, DSL included. Upload is going to be anywhere from 50kb (kilobits, not bytes) to 1mbit. Download will be between 1mb - 6mb depending on the provider. If you want uncapped internet invest in a business T1 or other pricey solution. $40-$50/month will not get you anywhere near uncapped.

 

[JoeKing]

also somthing to take note of is the invisible download limit comcast seems to be enforcing. Somthing around 30 gigs a month is what's being reported. As far as I know no dsl provider has such a limit.

 

[Eli]

Originally posted by: ThaGrandCow
All broadband companies have caps, DSL included. Upload is going to be anywhere from 50kb (kilobits, not bytes) to 1mbit. Download will be between 1mb - 6mb depending on the provider. If you want uncapped internet invest in a business T1 or other pricey solution. $40-$50/month will not get you anywhere near uncapped.

heh, apparently he means data transfer caps...

 

[sharq]

Sorry about that, I realize the word "caps" was a little bit misleading.

 

[sharq]

Anyone?

 

[Eli]

Do you live in the US?

I'm not aware of any limits with Comcast.

Oh, you're asking about DSL specifically.. shrug. I imagine that they have to tell you if there is a limit. I'm not currently aware of any transfer limits on DSL around here, but it could depend on the plan you have...

 

[MercenaryForHire]

The DSL companies up here just removed their download limits when they heard the cablecos were thinking of adding them.

Of course, this is Canada, the land of the free ... music! (2)

- M4H

 

[kami333]

Originally posted by: Eli
Do you live in the US?

I'm not aware of any limits with Comcast.

Oh, you're asking about DSL specifically.. shrug. I imagine that they have to tell you if there is a limit. I'm not currently aware of any transfer limits on DSL around here, but it could depend on the plan you have...

Comcast will threaten to cutoff your service if you use it excessively, like more than 100GB/month.

 

[Eli]

Originally posted by: kami333

Originally posted by: Eli
Do you live in the US?

I'm not aware of any limits with Comcast.

Oh, you're asking about DSL specifically.. shrug. I imagine that they have to tell you if there is a limit. I'm not currently aware of any transfer limits on DSL around here, but it could depend on the plan you have...

Comcast will threaten to cutoff your service if you use it excessively, like more than 100GB/month.

Ah, yes.. I've heard about that.

:frown:

I use about 5gb/mo, and I don't do ANY heavy downloading of mp3s or movies or anything. Just normal web surfing. I imagine that there are people with legitimate needs for quite a bit more transfer capacity than me.

But, 100gb/mo does seem quite excessive. I have a friend with time warner.. or whoever RoadRunner is now, and they regularly do 30 - 40gb/mo.. which I thought was pretty crazy, lol.

Edit: Since I setup this install in August of 2003, I've averaged 6.9gb/mo. A little higher than I thought.

 

[slag]

Originally posted by: ThaGrandCow
All broadband companies have caps, DSL included. Upload is going to be anywhere from 50kb (kilobits, not bytes) to 1mbit. Download will be between 1mb - 6mb depending on the provider. If you want uncapped internet invest in a business T1 or other pricey solution. $40-$50/month will not get you anywhere near uncapped.

No limit caps here, only rate caps.

I've verified this with SBC reps and techs alike.

I have sbc dsl in NE Kansas

 

[kami333]

Originally posted by: Eli

Originally posted by: kami333

Originally posted by: Eli
Do you live in the US?

I'm not aware of any limits with Comcast.

Oh, you're asking about DSL specifically.. shrug. I imagine that they have to tell you if there is a limit. I'm not currently aware of any transfer limits on DSL around here, but it could depend on the plan you have...

Comcast will threaten to cutoff your service if you use it excessively, like more than 100GB/month.

Ah, yes.. I've heard about that.

:frown:

I use about 5gb/mo, and I don't do ANY heavy downloading of mp3s or movies or anything. Just normal web surfing. I imagine that there are people with legitimate needs for quite a bit more transfer capacity than me.

But, 100gb/mo does seem quite excessive. I have a friend with time warner.. or whoever RoadRunner is now, and they regularly do 30 - 40gb/mo.. which I thought was pretty crazy, lol.

Edit: Since I setup this install in August of 2003, I've averaged 6.9gb/mo. A little higher than I thought.

Depends on your uses I guess. I get video streams from Japan so that ups my transfers considerably. Personally I would have no problem with having to pay more for my uses, if I were to get satellite and the single Japanese channel they offer it would be a considerable expense anyways. Too bad Comcast doesn't offer anything other than their residential plans to me.

 

[sharq]

I believe atleast the providers should be honest about their plans. I am on a Covad 384 plan, so technically I can't do more than ~3.4gb of traffic in one day, realistically it's probably closer to 2.4gb per day. I use the internet for watching streaming video, upload to website (text and pictures), I dl Open Source software especially the linux distro's (each ISO is 700mb and there are 3 for the major distro's). I don't use my connection for P2P or mp3's or movies, and so far I don't know of any caps on downloads for bandwidth. I know some cable companies have made their caps known to their customers, while others just say "too much". It seems it has started in Canada, so I guess the reason they're not advertising that benefit here is because they are keeping their options open.

 

[alkemyst]

It was like dialup ISP....in the beginning unlimited meant unlimited....you never had to log out. Then they started getting saturated so they put in automatic kickers for X minutes of idle time.....then when people used pingers to prevent that (even though they were doing nothing, not even folding), companies started with XXX hours of online time allowed with extra hours at $x.xx each.

It's the same now with broadband....as long as the 'pipe' is holding out there is no problem, but as soon as a few file sites get hosted and calls start coming in en masse about "why is my DSL connection running at 1/2 speed for the last week!", they have to put their foot down or else alienate their bread and butter clients.

What I worry about is all this push for 100% of homes to have broadband may mean the fastest home connect you are going to be able to get is going to be like DSL Lite or worse. Of course if they can keep the speed at close to 1.5 or more for everyone then I say that'd be cool.

Seriously for many 56K is plenty (family to family emailers, chatrrooms, checking tickets), what they should do is first roll out whatever services they are going to 'create' to serve everyone at broadband speeds...then see if anyone even wants to 'play'.

Å