Internet Data Caps

[StinkyPinky]

2TB is effectively not a cap. I can't even think of a way to blow through that.

I'm on unlimited myself. I don't think I've ever gone over 300 GB.

 

[StinkyPinky]

And FIOS, which I believe at one time advertised "No caps", does in fact have "soft caps". Something ranging from 2TB / mo to 10TB / mo, depending on market and locale.

If you're pulling down terabytes of data a month you're probably doing something you shouldn't be doing anyway. Unless you're a business in which case you would have a business account .

 

[mmntech]

Here in Canada, you can either get slow internet with no cap, or fast internet with really stingy caps.

Back when I was with the cable company, they were only giving my 80GB/mo and were charging $65 for it. They've since upped it to 135GB. They have an unlimited option but it's very expensive at $125/mo.

Bell Canada is worse with their pricey top tier which only gives you 300GB. They used to have an unlimited option, but I can't find it on their site anymore.

I have 25mbps ADSL with no cap right now through an indie ISP.

 

[StinkyPinky]

I've been in New Zealand for a few years now and internet has really improved here. I'm paying $105 NZD (about, 70 USD) for unlimited 100/50 fiber internet with VoIP phone and phone number. I think I can go up to 200/100 for another $10 but don't see the need.

Would be interested to see how that compares to US states with similar population density (OR and WA come to mind)

 

[Aikouka]

Unless you're a business in which case you would have a business account .

I think the whole "business account" thing gets abused way too much by ISPs. At least in my understanding, the point of a business account is for a higher tier of service, which is crucial to businesses. Of course, there are extra perks such as static IP addresses, which are important for hosting data locally.

I guess what I'm asking is... why does it even matter if I want to run a server off my connection? I'm paying for an X up and Y down connection, as long as I'm doing legal stuff, the ISPs should stay the $#@% out of it. It's nothing more than a money grab... especially since business accounts can cost 50-100% more than residential accounts for the exact same service.

 

[PrincessFrosty]

I guess what I'm asking is... why does it even matter if I want to run a server off my connection?

It doesn't?

What ISPs are stopping you from running your own services most do not these days, I have 152Mbit/15Mbit residential internet with Virgin Media and they don't block any ports which means you can host whatever you like, I've hosted vent/TS/Minecraft/7D2D and many other services on my connection over the years, they offer a static IP which is helpful but not even necessary with DynamicDNS.

Most of the time ISPs are objecting to hosting services on home connections is simply the high bandwidth cost over time, specifically the upload which is typically designed to be less on residential ISP networks since they're mostly consumers and not providers (until bit torrent came along)

Again most of the posts I'm seeing here are simply naive to the cost of provisioning bandwidth, it costs to provision and if you want a lot more then you need to pay more, it's that simple. ANYONE can get a leased internet line that has 100% bandwidth available 100% of the time, it just costs an arm and a let. All this moaning is king of like asking people to provide you with gas at prices which are lower than what it costs to provide gas, no one is going to do that.

 

[XavierMace]

2TB is effectively not a cap. I can't even think of a way to blow through that.

I'm on unlimited myself. I don't think I've ever gone over 300 GB.

You're not thinking hard enough. LOL. My record is 1.5TB. I could have gone higher, but I was tired of resetting my cable modem every day.

What ISPs are stopping you from running your own services most do not these days, I have 152Mbit/15Mbit residential internet with Virgin Media and they don't block any ports which means you can host whatever you like, I've hosted vent/TS/Minecraft/7D2D and many other services on my connection over the years, they offer a static IP which is helpful but not even necessary with DynamicDNS.

Cox still does last I checked.

 

[Anteaus]

2TB is effectively not a cap. I can't even think of a way to blow through that.

I'm on unlimited myself. I don't think I've ever gone over 300 GB.

I'm not really picking on you, but I'm going to use your comment as an excuse to share this opinion.

While I agree 2 TB is high, 300 GB is not. After I got rid of my cable TV, Netflix became a larger part of a my media consumption. I would stream on average 3-4 hours on a weekday and 16-20 hours on the weekends. Anyone who binge watches various tv series knows how easy it is to do that.

Netflix's own website quotes that on "High" quality it uses approximately 3 GB per hour for HD and 7 GB per hour for Ultra HD. I learned this rather quickly by shattering my cap early in the month at one point. I've since switched to "medium" quality which is a more conservative 0.7 GB per hour (based on their website).

Based on those numbers at the highest quality, just watching regular HD content for 3 hours a day for 30 days can theoretically add up to 270+ GB. Obviously true data usage will vary.

As people start dumping conventional cable and move to streaming services, data caps become more important that they used to be. For many gamers, their largest data burdens used to be the occasional game download and their World of Warcraft traffic. For some of us and more people all the time, our internet connections are responsible for our entire multimedia experience.

I guess it all depends on what people use their internet for. If they still rely on regular cable or satellite tv, I can see there not being a real problem at the moment.

 

[Genx87]

The future will likely be all about the data caps. Either they have to regulate traffic tightly so they can charge for the content of said traffic, or they just do what I figure is the inevitable and stop worrying about content and just charge for bandwidth period.

And by "they" I mean isp's in general

I expect the same. We will stream TV but pay the old cable bill in new internet tiers.

 

[xantub]

I'm in Atlanta and I have Comcast. The cap is real, it's 300GB/month and you have '3 strikes' a year. I haven't crossed that yet, closest was like 254GB, but I hover around 200GB each month.

They recently announced they would bring 1 and 2Gb/s Internet to Atlanta (suspiciously shortly after Google announced they would bring fiber to Atlanta). It hasn't happened yet, but I heard a rumor that they would be dropping the cap at that time.

The cap has stopped me from streaming games though, as I would surely pass the cap if I did.

 

[imaheadcase]

No reason you should have data caps, I don't know a single cable ISP that won't let you get business upgrade for no data caps for just like $10-20 a month more.

Thank goodness i got Charter and no caps. If a ISP enforced a data cap limit on me, i would actually sell my house and move. I routinely blow through 200 gigs a week download. lol

 

[Aikouka]

No reason you should have data caps, I don't know a single cable ISP that won't let you get business upgrade for no data caps for just like $10-20 a month more.

I've been told that Comcast wants proof that you're actually a business, and no... it's not an additional $10 to $20. My Internet is $55 a month ($65 without a TV package), and the same business tier (50/10) is $110 a month.

EDIT:

The cap is real, it's 300GB/month and you have '3 strikes' a year.

Are you sure it's three strikes per year? I'm pretty sure you just get three strikes for good.

 

[cbrunny]

Cap on data is immoral. I refuse to be bound by a cap. I'll switch providers in a heartbeat if mine ever adds a cap.

 

[Rebel_L]

Cap on data is immoral. I refuse to be bound by a cap. I'll switch providers in a heartbeat if mine ever adds a cap.

Why would a cap on data be immoral?, data transportation is the service you are buying, to charge based on how much data you move seems like it would be the only way to fairly distribute the costs of the infrastructure and maintenance costs required to provide the service.

 

[cmdrdredd]

Why would a cap on data be immoral?, data transportation is the service you are buying, to charge based on how much data you move seems like it would be the only way to fairly distribute the costs of the infrastructure and maintenance costs required to provide the service.

Fairly distribute? Maybe you aren't in the US but here there are virtual monopolies on internet and TV coverage in the local areas. For example, in my area you have two options. AT&T or Comcast. That's it. If you want high speed internet those are the options. Satellite isn't even a viable alternative. There is nothing fair about it to begin with. That's why I wish Google would push harder for Google fiber. 1Gbps internet with no caps via fiber to the home for far less than other companies charge for 100Mbps. If I say to comcast "I'll just go to AT&T" they might laugh at me because they can't provide anywhere close to the speeds I get currently. I pay for 105Mbps but regularly get 125Mbps.

 

[Denithor]

There are data caps built into even unlimited packs. You can only download so much at a given speed each month. Instituting a separate data cap beyond this is simply trying to prevent people from actually using the bandwidth they have already paid for.

 

[cmdrdredd]

There are data caps built into even unlimited packs. You can only download so much at a given speed each month. Instituting a separate data cap beyond this is simply trying to prevent people from actually using the bandwidth they have already paid for.

Not true, at least not here. I went to 650GB last month and it was never slow. Part of that was downloading all 60GB of GTA5 twice because of a corrupt install.

 

[Rebel_L]

Fairly distribute? Maybe you aren't in the US but here there are virtual monopolies on internet and TV coverage in the local areas. For example, in my area you have two options. AT&T or Comcast. That's it. If you want high speed internet those are the options. Satellite isn't even a viable alternative. There is nothing fair about it to begin with. That's why I wish Google would push harder for Google fiber. 1Gbps internet with no caps via fiber to the home for far less than other companies charge for 100Mbps. If I say to comcast "I'll just go to AT&T" they might laugh at me because they can't provide anywhere close to the speeds I get currently. I pay for 105Mbps but regularly get 125Mbps.

None of what you said has anything to do with what I said. I said ISP's would be fairly charging customers for service if they charge based on use (you can work a corresponding fee structure for minimum guaranteed speeds as this also affects their delivery and infrastructure costs) How companies compete with each other or their desired level of profit margins has nothing to do with fairly distributing costs across a single companies customer base.

 

[Aikouka]

None of what you said has anything to do with what I said. I said ISP's would be fairly charging customers for service if they charge based on use (you can work a corresponding fee structure for minimum guaranteed speeds as this also affects their delivery and infrastructure costs) How companies compete with each other or their desired level of profit margins has nothing to do with fairly distributing costs across a single companies customer base.

I think he's trying to say that companies have no reason to be fair in pricing because there's no real competition in most markets. I mentioned earlier how it actually costs me more to get a second 300GB chunk of data than it does for my entire Internet connection. Now, if we want a fairer look, it's really $65 for the service (no TV discount) vs. $60 for 300GB of data. There's no way 300GB of data costs them that much... especially if you're something like a heavy Netflix user as Comcast is already forcing Netflix to pay for your usage! D:

 

[cmdrdredd]

None of what you said has anything to do with what I said. I said ISP's would be fairly charging customers for service if they charge based on use (you can work a corresponding fee structure for minimum guaranteed speeds as this also affects their delivery and infrastructure costs) How companies compete with each other or their desired level of profit margins has nothing to do with fairly distributing costs across a single companies customer base.

No because the system isn't setup fairly for the consumer from the start. The monopoly can charge what they want how they want and you're at their mercy. Your usage of "fair" simply doesn't fit. The pricing jumps from $80/mo for 105/20 to $300/mo for 500/100 for example.

I want to pay for the speed I need/want and not for how much data I think I may use. It's up to them to provide the speed they sell. If I low ball it and say I only need 200GB and go over I screwed myself. If I say I may need 900GB but only ever use 300GB I screwed myself. I should never ever have to make that decision. This is why I pay for unlimited mobile data from T-Mobile. I don't want to pay fines and fees because I choose the wrong amount or one month I watched more movies than usual via streaming.

 

[Elixer]

I think the only major ISP that doesn't have caps is Charter.
AT&T does, comcast does, Frontier does...

 

[videogames101]

Data caps aren't irrational, the infrastructure the ISPs build around the backbone has a maximum capacity of data throughput which needs to be shared between all users, data caps are used to make sure that some users don't detrimentally slow down the network for others by constantly uploading and downloading large files.

Think of data throughput not unlike gas or electricity, there's a per unit cost to provision it and most ISPs don't charge per unit but rather sell packages where the amount is flexible between certain amounts, normally because some people don't use much bandwidth and so it's shared between a number of users, essentially low users subsidize the high users.

Getting more data is simply, pay more money, most ISPs have tiered packages to offer high data users a better package with more data transfer, you can even rent leased lines which reserve that entire chunk of bandwidth for you so you can download 24/7, they're just insanely expensive (our work line is about £800pcm for 50mbit fibre uncapped)

Games are getting bigger for sure but data rates and bandwidth limits are going up, I grabbed GTAV on my 152mbit line in about 2 hours and it's 60gb, I don't have specific data caps although I do get throttled temporarily if I download a huge amount of data at peak times which is a very reasonable deal.



Some UK ISPs did do this and some may still do it. One of the major differences is that phone networks data usage is tiny compared to the data usage of the internet, voice calls require a tiny amount of bandwidth, the amount of data users can put through the ISP when something like GTAV launches and everyone hammers digital distribution is insane.

The main issue is that users go through peak behaviour, broadband was originally designed to be somewhat burst like in nature, peak usage for a small amount of time when needed, the networks can't handle everyone always downloading max speed. You can give 10,000 users all a $0.05 per Gb charge but if they all decide to hammer the internet at the same time say during some netflix release then your network needs to be big enough to supply all that data at peak, this is why caps are used instead it forces people to moderate out their usage across periods of time. Some UK ISPs had/have on and off peak caps where offpeak had a larger cap because they preferred you using data overnight when usage was naturally low.

Basically what I'm trying to say is that the network has a maximum throughput at any one time and selling on demand per Gb is risky because patterns in your userbase can hammer the network all at once bringing it to a crawl, it's simply not possible to provision high speed internet so that if all your users are downloading at once the bandwidth doesn't run out, unless every user has a leased line and reserved bandwidth and is paying you $1k a month each.

Yeah, which is why I supposedly buy "bandwidth", which if they didn't oversell wouldn't need any data caps. But they do oversell it. Their own fault.

 

[xantub]

I've been told that Comcast wants proof that you're actually a business, and no... it's not an additional $10 to $20. My Internet is $55 a month ($65 without a TV package), and the same business tier (50/10) is $110 a month.

EDIT:



Are you sure it's three strikes per year? I'm pretty sure you just get three strikes for good.

It's really not three strikes. What it means is that in a period of 12 months you can go over the cap three times without paying extra. If you go over the cap in May, June and then March of the following year, you don't pay extra. But if you go over the cap again in April, you pay an extra per GB that you went over (not sure how much). Then in May you can go over again without paying as it's been 12 months since the first one.

 

[PrincessFrosty]

Yeah, which is why I supposedly buy "bandwidth", which if they didn't oversell wouldn't need any data caps. But they do oversell it. Their own fault.

You lack any kind of perspective on the matter. ISPs aren't overselling, they're taking a serivce that is extremely expensive to provision and trying to sell it to residential customers at prices which they can be reasonably expected to afford.

In order to do that and still be able to turn a profit they have to sacrifice certain things, you have to understand that what you're buying is a contended service which does not have the capacity to deliver your maximum line speed 24/7 because to do that would cost more than you're paying for the service.

If you want a truly uncapped service that gurantees you max bandwidth 24/7 then that's cool, there's plenty of ISPs that will sell you that service but expect to pay $1000's per month for even slow to medium speed connections.

The amount of self entitled people in this thread is disgusting, go and actually read up about how residential ISPs work, go and find out how expensive the infrastructure is to setup and maintain and then go research the prices of leased lines. You'll find yourself thankful that residential ISPs are delivering you services which are affordable and offer decent speeds and high caps.

And FYI, those people who are near their caps each month, you're probably customers that the ISPs are making a loss on, the amount of data you're using (200Gb, 300Gb or whatever) per month probably costs more to provision than what you're paying. The reason they can do this is because they work on average usage and theres other people out there who pay for the same package as you but only surf the net and use maybe 5Gb a month.

A huge necessity for education in this thread, my god.

 

[PrincessFrosty]

No because the system isn't setup fairly for the consumer from the start. The monopoly can charge what they want how they want and you're at their mercy. Your usage of "fair" simply doesn't fit. The pricing jumps from $80/mo for 105/20 to $300/mo for 500/100 for example.

I want to pay for the speed I need/want and not for how much data I think I may use. It's up to them to provide the speed they sell. If I low ball it and say I only need 200GB and go over I screwed myself. If I say I may need 900GB but only ever use 300GB I screwed myself. I should never ever have to make that decision. This is why I pay for unlimited mobile data from T-Mobile. I don't want to pay fines and fees because I choose the wrong amount or one month I watched more movies than usual via streaming.

Monopolies are bad and in the US you have one because the government are stupid smacktards, thankfully we got rid of that in the UK over the last few decades.

Having said that, little of the pricing structure you're seeing has anything to do with monopolies and everything to do with the fact that data is expensive to provision and ISPs use lots of tricks to share out the bandwidth as much as possible to lower the cost so its affordable for the average person.

You're making an assumption that average data throughput scales linearly with the speed of the connection, and this isn't true. People on 100Mbit connections aren't on average downloading 2x as much as the average people on 50mbit connections, it's more like 5x as much.

What you want isn't realistic, and you have to understand the nature of networks to understand why. If you demand from an ISP that you want 50mbit internet but your conditions are that you can use as much or as little data as you like, then in order to deliver that they need to provision 50mbit across their network at all time, in other words you need a reserved chunk of 50mbit.

If you look at the prices of something like that which you can actually buy then that service costs something like £875 per month ex VAT which is what we pay for 50mbit leased fibre to our business, as the head of ICT I sign the bill for that every month. That's a competative price to pay for what you're asking for.

Now what you actually find when you measure usage of residential lines is that on average across lots of people they use only a tiny fraction of that bandwidth each, 50mbit running max speed for an entire month is about 16Tb of data, the average person uses WAY less than the advertised caps of say 100-200Gb, these only ever effect a few percent of people on the network. The average is somewhat closer to 30-50Gb. They can cram a lot more users at 30-50Gb per user onto the same infrastructure and therefore charge each user less while keeping a 50mbit speed.

If you're not happy with the data caps and you want more, then simple...buy a leased line, drop £1-5k for installation to your building, and 3-5 year lease at £800+ per month and you'll get 100% of the bandwidth 100% of the time with absolutely no caps, that's simply the cost of provisioning what you're asking for.