Charter cable to place caps on usage

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Xavier434

Lifer
Oct 14, 2002
10,373
1
0
Originally posted by: spidey07
Xavier, you will also notice that they (Charter) are providing an unlimited service for 140 bucks a month. I never said you couldn't have an unlimited service, just that one needs to pay for it because the prices where they are at today cannot sustain an all you can eat model.

If gubment steps in to say you can't have caps then expect home broadband prices to skyrocket.

That depends. Take a closer look at the bill. It is also asking for a lot of expansions and infrastructure enhancements which could pave the way for a lot more competition to rise up across the nation. If that happens, then it should help keep the prices in check.

The combination of proper government involvement to support net neutrality and truly opportunistic free market competition is the key to maximizing the benefits for the consumer.
 

torpid

Lifer
Sep 14, 2003
11,631
11
76
For $140 a month Charter better have OBGYNs on staff that will come deliver babies for their customers. Otherwise it seems like highway robbery.
 

spidey07

No Lifer
Aug 4, 2000
65,469
5
76
Originally posted by: torpid
For $140 a month Charter better have OBGYNs on staff that will come deliver babies for their customers. Otherwise it seems like highway robbery.

For that speed it's actually very, very cheap.

60 Mbs for 140 bucks? That's a freaking bargain.
 

Vette73

Lifer
Jul 5, 2000
21,503
9
0
Originally posted by: spidey07
Originally posted by: torpid
For $140 a month Charter better have OBGYNs on staff that will come deliver babies for their customers. Otherwise it seems like highway robbery.

For that speed it's actually very, very cheap.

60 Mbs for 140 bucks? That's a freaking bargain.

Really, I mean we should be thanking them. Hell we should just drop to our knees and give them Bjs, mow their lawns, wash their cars, etc... just for the privalge to allow them to charge us for this.

/spidey:lips:

 

spidey07

No Lifer
Aug 4, 2000
65,469
5
76
Originally posted by: Marlin1975


Really, I mean we should be thanking them. Hell we should just drop to our knees and give them Bjs, mow their lawns, wash their cars, etc... just for the privalge to allow them to charge us for this.

/spidey:lips:

A DS3 (45 Mbs) will run you around $15,000 a month not including facilities and access charges. It's a freaking bargain.
 

Modelworks

Lifer
Feb 22, 2007
16,240
7
76
Originally posted by: spidey07
Originally posted by: Marlin1975


Really, I mean we should be thanking them. Hell we should just drop to our knees and give them Bjs, mow their lawns, wash their cars, etc... just for the privalge to allow them to charge us for this.

/spidey:lips:

A DS3 (45 Mbs) will run you around $15,000 a month not including facilities and access charges. It's a freaking bargain.

Maybe so. But how much you want to bet that if I got there $140 a month service and used it all I wanted that they wouldn't come up with another cap ? Its been done before with other so called unlimited plans.
 

Xavier434

Lifer
Oct 14, 2002
10,373
1
0
Originally posted by: Modelworks
Originally posted by: spidey07
Originally posted by: Marlin1975


Really, I mean we should be thanking them. Hell we should just drop to our knees and give them Bjs, mow their lawns, wash their cars, etc... just for the privalge to allow them to charge us for this.

/spidey:lips:

A DS3 (45 Mbs) will run you around $15,000 a month not including facilities and access charges. It's a freaking bargain.

Maybe so. But how much you want to bet that if I got there $140 a month service and used it all I wanted that they wouldn't come up with another cap ? Its been done before with other so called unlimited plans.

Not to mention throttle your bandwidth.
 

KMFJD

Lifer
Aug 11, 2005
32,568
51,910
136
Originally posted by: spidey07
Originally posted by: torpid
For $140 a month Charter better have OBGYNs on staff that will come deliver babies for their customers. Otherwise it seems like highway robbery.

For that speed it's actually very, very cheap.

60 Mbs for 140 bucks? That's a freaking bargain.

I'd happily pay twice that much for half the speed if it was available in my area....


/Rural Wireless internet sucks

 

torpid

Lifer
Sep 14, 2003
11,631
11
76
Originally posted by: spidey07
Originally posted by: torpid
For $140 a month Charter better have OBGYNs on staff that will come deliver babies for their customers. Otherwise it seems like highway robbery.

For that speed it's actually very, very cheap.

60 Mbs for 140 bucks? That's a freaking bargain.

Only if that's guaranteed 60mbps and not "maximum depending on other customers" and if it came with significantly better customer service than Charter has shown itself capable of providing.
 

Nocturnal

Lifer
Jan 8, 2002
18,927
0
76
In all honesty, I would pay $150 or so for unlimited use and a 60Mbit connection. I don't mind the caps as long as they provide a decently priced service that has the unlimited capability.
 
Feb 19, 2001
20,155
23
81
Originally posted by: Modelworks
Originally posted by: tk149
If you use Netflix or Hulu to watch on demand, what is the maximum (highest-quality)download size of a 2 hour movie? Will this cap be a concern if I watch movies and play online games?

I just did a quick test with Hulu streaming this :
http://www.hulu.com/hd/48731

Not a bad show, going to finish watching it. Good if you like swords + wizards, etc.

Totals:

10 minutes HD streaming from HULU
___________________

Upload: 3.24 MB
Download: 150.10 MB
Upload + Download: 153.34 MB

153.34 x 6 = 920.04 MB / Hour

So a 2 hour movie would be about 1.8GB.

used netmeter, cool app, has logs, daily reports, projected usage, exporting of info, all for free and it only uses up 7MB of memory.



http://www.metal-machine.de/readerror/

So you can watch like 120 movies on a 250gb cap. It's enough. I have Comcast and honestly it's not too much of a cap. I've gone on download sprees and I still havent gone over. If you're trying to fill your 1TB HD then yeah you might kill the cap, but... for normal users even people who insist on HD 720p rips for their TV shows, it should be MORE than enough.
 

Xavier434

Lifer
Oct 14, 2002
10,373
1
0
Originally posted by: DLeRium
So you can watch like 120 movies on a 250gb cap. It's enough. I have Comcast and honestly it's not too much of a cap. I've gone on download sprees and I still havent gone over. If you're trying to fill your 1TB HD then yeah you might kill the cap, but... for normal users even people who insist on HD 720p rips for their TV shows, it should be MORE than enough.

120 SD movies.

With all of the HD content being streamable through XBL these days and the massive booms that Netflix is getting that cap is going to be broken by a lot more people sooner than later. Each HD movie on XBL is about 8 gigs so that is 15 movies a month on a 250gb cap. Of course, that is assuming you do not use any of that 250 on anything else throughout the month. It isn't the end of the world for now, but I question where it will stand in 2 years.
 

Canai

Diamond Member
Oct 4, 2006
8,016
1
0
Originally posted by: DLeRium
So you can watch like 120 movies on a 250gb cap. It's enough. I have Comcast and honestly it's not too much of a cap. I've gone on download sprees and I still havent gone over. If you're trying to fill your 1TB HD then yeah you might kill the cap, but... for normal users even people who insist on HD 720p rips for their TV shows, it should be MORE than enough.

Aye, but Charter's going for a 100GB cap.
 

Auryg

Platinum Member
Dec 28, 2003
2,377
0
71
God, this sucks.

I have a group of friends that all live in the same house; most of them use netflix and stream videos. On top of that are xbox 360 demos..So I guess with Halo Wars alone today they would have used up 6 Gigs, and that was a fairly small demo.

Even with me and my roommate we're going to have to watch what we do. The 16 meg option isn't available here either, only 10. Qwest DSL is available but their top speed in our area is an amazing 3 megs, for the same price as Charter's 10 meg.

Edit: Just checked, and Qwest has upped theirs to 7 megs, but it's still 47 dollars a month. Ridiculous. Does Qwest have caps too?
 

spidey07

No Lifer
Aug 4, 2000
65,469
5
76
Originally posted by: Auryg
God, this sucks.

I have a group of friends that all live in the same house; most of them use netflix and stream videos. On top of that are xbox 360 demos..So I guess with Halo Wars alone today they would have used up 6 Gigs, and that was a fairly small demo.

Even with me and my roommate we're going to have to watch what we do. The 16 meg option isn't available here either, only 10. Qwest DSL is available but their top speed in our area is an amazing 3 megs, for the same price as Charter's 10 meg.

Edit: Just checked, and Qwest has upped theirs to 7 megs, but it's still 47 dollars a month. Ridiculous. Does Qwest have caps too?

So you are finally realizing that nothing comes for free?

I just paid a 300 dollar gas and electric bill. Life is not free, nothing comes for free.
 

TridenT

Lifer
Sep 4, 2006
16,800
45
91
That sucks... I am a comcast user though, so I get 250GBs...

I have cutback tremendously on my downloads for fear that I might hit that 250GB cap :( It isn't hard for me, a person who knows how to download legal shit, to hit that cap in just a few days.

Download every episode of Diggnation in High-Res H.264. (Shows typically go to 1GB and there are over 150!) Then download all of the Totally Rad Show episodes(Which also go to 1GB) and you have hit 250GB cap in just 70 hours on Comcast. I have done this kind of thing too. Just non-stop downloading fests for days on end from legal sources.

I hate these caps, they are bullshit.
 

Auryg

Platinum Member
Dec 28, 2003
2,377
0
71
Originally posted by: spidey07
Originally posted by: Auryg
God, this sucks.

I have a group of friends that all live in the same house; most of them use netflix and stream videos. On top of that are xbox 360 demos..So I guess with Halo Wars alone today they would have used up 6 Gigs, and that was a fairly small demo.

Even with me and my roommate we're going to have to watch what we do. The 16 meg option isn't available here either, only 10. Qwest DSL is available but their top speed in our area is an amazing 3 megs, for the same price as Charter's 10 meg.

Edit: Just checked, and Qwest has upped theirs to 7 megs, but it's still 47 dollars a month. Ridiculous. Does Qwest have caps too?

So you are finally realizing that nothing comes for free?

I just paid a 300 dollar gas and electric bill. Life is not free, nothing comes for free.

Yes, and you're such an unbiased source. Gas is something physical, as is electricity. Do I get charged for using my TV more? For listening to XM more? No, because they aren't sending me anything (besides miniscule amounts of electricity/radio waves). If they were truly having problems with overdownloaders we should be seeing routers restarting from stress, lower than advertised speeds, etc. They would also only do this during the peak hours.

And to degrade your analogy further, can I use my internet less and then pay less, just as I would for gas/electricity? It would seem not. The only analogy you could make is between cell phone companies, and at least most of them have roll over minutes, unlimited plans available to everyone, and other things like that.
 

Imdmn04

Platinum Member
Jan 28, 2002
2,566
6
81

When every ISP starts capping (and all eventually will), the Internet model will adapt. For example, all payloads could be processed by a sophisticated compression algorithm before it goes into the network pipe. More beefier networking processing power will be built into ethernet chips to process the encoding and decoding of low level frames.

The sky won't fall just because bandwidth will be limited to the end user, there is always a way around everything. P2P won't die because of it.
 

ComputerWizKid

Golden Member
Apr 28, 2004
1,188
0
86
Originally posted by: lokiju
Noooooooooooooooo!!!


Fuck I hate Charter but they are the only high speed internet I can even get :(

Fuckers! :|

I'm in the same boat I used to use Optimum Online but I moved and now I can only get Charter or AT&T both of which suck
 

spidey07

No Lifer
Aug 4, 2000
65,469
5
76
Originally posted by: Imdmn04

When every ISP starts capping (and all eventually will), the Internet model will adapt. For example, all payloads could be processed by a sophisticated compression algorithm before it goes into the network pipe. More beefier networking processing power will be built into ethernet chips to process the encoding and decoding of low level frames.

The sky won't fall just because bandwidth will be limited to the end user, there is always a way around everything. P2P won't die because of it.

Most of the traffic is already compressed - pictures, video, etc.

Yes, and you're such an unbiased source. Gas is something physical, as is electricity. Do I get charged for using my TV more? For listening to XM more? No, because they aren't sending me anything (besides miniscule amounts of electricity/radio waves). If they were truly having problems with overdownloaders we should be seeing routers restarting from stress, lower than advertised speeds, etc. They would also only do this during the peak hours. And to degrade your analogy further, can I use my internet less and then pay less, just as I would for gas/electricity? It would seem not. The only analogy you could make is between cell phone companies, and at least most of them have roll over minutes, unlimited plans available to everyone, and other things like that.

You don't know what you are talking about. An overloaded router won't restart, it just drops packets. And I'm about as unbiased as you are going to get, I post facts and personal first hand experience with designing these networks in an attempt to stop the rabid misinformation that gets spewn on internet message boards by people that have no idea what they are talking about.
 

Xavier434

Lifer
Oct 14, 2002
10,373
1
0
Spidey, the biggest problem with your position on this stuff is your refusal to acknowledge that there isn't nearly enough competition to keep everything in check. At least, that is how you have argued before. Not sure if your position on that has changed. 2-3 providers is not enough since they all follow pretty much the exact same business model.

The rest is just details and subjective opinions concerning net neutrality and laws surrounding it.