MediaCom Cable - Introducing a data cap mid-contract

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jaqie

Platinum Member
Apr 6, 2008
2,472
1
0
You'll usually find in the terms and conditions of most residential services that server hosting is against the rules- you can pay for a business class account if you want the bandwidth to do that. Besides, the geeky things you're describing affect about .001% of typical users. I work for an ISP with 10's of 1000's of users- our highest user nationwide is at about 102GB this month.
My point, and my post, was in reply to an outright claim that using over 250GB/month inherently meant that piracy was involved (and insinuated that it was the majority).

C. Restrictions on Use. The Service is a consumer grade service, and you may not resell the Service, use it
for high volume purposes, or engage in similar activities that constitute such use (commercial or non-
commercial). If you subscribe to a Broadband Service, you may connect multiple computers/devices within
a single home to your modem and/or router to access the Service. You also may not exceed the bandwidth
usage limitations that Company may establish from time to time for the Service, or use the Service to host
any type of server. Violation of this section may result in bandwidth restrictions on your Service or
suspension or termination of your Service.
Looks to me nebulous at best - and that if they complain I should cut down on my use or purchase a higher tier. When I did contact them I specifically requested the highest bandwidth connection they offered and was given this, so I do not think they honestly care.
 

jaqie

Platinum Member
Apr 6, 2008
2,472
1
0
I bolded the things that would push you into a business class of service. Don't think for a second because I point this out I'm trying to justify caps/levels. However, hosting/serving pretty much makes these arguments moot. There's plenty of ground to stand on with the unbolded statements.
Sure, but check the post I just made. They gave me this when I requested the highest bandwidth they had. I am in grey area at least, I know that, but my point was definitely that I use over 250gb some months and am not being a pirate doing it.

I didn't say I never pirated software, I have in the past, but I almost entirely use freeware or shareware (and purchased most shareware Ive continued using) and honestly anymore I just pay for the things I use or find a free or cheap alternative. These days they are ubiquitous, so only the selfish and lazy do not do so. a la http://alternativeto.net et al.
 

Pray To Jesus

Diamond Member
Mar 14, 2011
3,642
0
0
- You don't need 25 games on your HD
- If you're watching 2 HD movies a day, you need to go the hell outside
- That's a lot of purchasing
- Dunno about Linux...don't imagine that affects a lot of people



You'll usually find in the terms and conditions of most residential services that server hosting is against the rules- you can pay for a business class account if you want the bandwidth to do that. Besides, the geeky things you're describing affect about .001% of typical users. I work for an ISP with 10's of 1000's of users- our highest user nationwide is at about 102GB this month.

hey guys trust this guy's opinion on what we should do with the internet knows what is best for us he works for a ISP

all bow down to his supreme knowledge of what is good for you

and fuck you if you watch HD movies. fucking loser go outside!
 

RelaxTheMind

Platinum Member
Oct 15, 2002
2,245
0
76
i did a lot of VMing of new linux distros last month (32/64 bit). on top of my lightly used plex, cloud syncs, and constant streaming of edm mixes and movies i hit 225gb.

I worked on the network side for a major ISP for several years that has several million customers. nobody gave a shit about usage except for that one guy that used 77TB in one month on a residential connection.

Bandwidth congestion? yes theoretically... but with the implementation of a fiber backbone it realistically doesnt exist. It is all marketing. Those TOS guidelines are there to weed out businesses for the sole fact that they can charge them more for the same exact service + better/faster field tech service and nicer phone reps... and the use of port 80.
 

rudeguy

Lifer
Dec 27, 2001
47,371
14
61
Says the guy with 10 Verifone terminals sitting on his desk and using what kind of software to access them?....:whiste:

and all are used for legal purposes.

I don't understand the comparison?



PS:
Its more like 15 right now with about 50 broken ones under it.
 

SunnyD

Belgian Waffler
Jan 2, 2001
32,674
145
106
www.neftastic.com
- You don't need 25 games on your HD
- If you're watching 2 HD movies a day, you need to go the hell outside
- That's a lot of purchasing
- Dunno about Linux...don't imagine that affects a lot of people

***snip***

I work for an ISP with 10's of 1000's of users-...

You've lost all credibility in this thread. Simply saying shit like "You don't need" or "Go the hell outside" or "That's a lot of purchasing" doesn't make it any less reasonable for a legitimate consumer. You're simply speaking like a businessman/shareholder, nothing more, nothing less.
 

SunnyD

Belgian Waffler
Jan 2, 2001
32,674
145
106
www.neftastic.com

It is true that all residential customers will be migrated to usage based billing, effective September 7th. However, this is unlikely to affect the vast majority of our customer base from a billing perspective. Nearly 97% of our customers historically are under the new usage allowance for their respective tier. Researching your usage history, you trend well below the current allowance for your level of service as well. We do offer tools to monitor this usage here: http://www.mediacomtoday.com/usagemeter. You will need a Mediacom email address and password to log in and use this site. We can certainly set this up if one hasn't already been established. I can understand the frustration this new policy may cause. While the allowance for your current service level is set well above your average usage, if at any time you feel that this does not meet your needs, we do offer other levels with varying allowances. More information about these levels and the policy itself can be found here: http://mediacomcable.com/site/legal_additional_terms_text.html

Someone should quote that and post "97% of all statistics are fabricated."
 

Fritzo

Lifer
Jan 3, 2001
41,883
2,121
126
hey guys trust this guy's opinion on what we should do with the internet knows what is best for us he works for a ISP

all bow down to his supreme knowledge of what is good for you

and fuck you if you watch HD movies. fucking loser go outside!

If you're watching 5 hours of movies 30 days a week, yeah, there's a problem with you :D

Anyway, the vast majority of people do not do this. The only people that seem to complain about caps are those 1) doing something wrong, 2) doing something the service wasn't designed for, or 3) Having too many geek factors going on.

Land line Internet is no different than an all you can eat buffet. Go ahead and gorge yourself silly. However, if you start showing up with boxes to take stuff home, you're going to be asked to knock it off.
 

SunnyD

Belgian Waffler
Jan 2, 2001
32,674
145
106
www.neftastic.com
Wow... html injection of popups over non-mediacom websites to inform of and "force" acceptance of ToS changes for mediacom? That's a good one!
 

Wonderful Pork

Golden Member
Jul 24, 2005
1,531
1
81
Bandwidth caps suck! Comcast has a new page up with the tiers they are trying - 300GB for basic, escalating up to 600 GB if you have Extreme 105 service. That's better than 250gb across the board. (Thankfully no caps in my area...yet!)

What drives me nuts is that they charge $10/50GB over the cap, and only give you a $5 credit for keeping it under 5GB per month. By their math, that should be giving me a $50 credit (250 GB "saved" @ $10/50GB).

If it was true metered billing like a utility then I wouldn't have an issue with it. $10-$15 flat service/distribution fee and then per byte - A-OK with that, use all you want and pay for it.
 

Fritzo

Lifer
Jan 3, 2001
41,883
2,121
126
You've lost all credibility in this thread. Simply saying shit like "You don't need" or "Go the hell outside" or "That's a lot of purchasing" doesn't make it any less reasonable for a legitimate consumer. You're simply speaking like a businessman/shareholder, nothing more, nothing less.

I'm speaking from experience and inside knowledge of the logistics of delivering home Internet service.

If a sample of, say, 95000 users doesn't get anywhere near a 250 GB cap, then that's a pretty good sample to say this behavior isn't common. Also most ISP's allow you to get higher caps with higher service plans, so if you're going to be that heavy of a user, you should pay for it. We have corporations running servers on their connection that don't go over 100GB a month.

Profit margins on residential Internet is razor thin (I'm talking like a couple of bucks profit per customer). The infrastructure of supply cable or DSL is most likely already paid for, but the OC-48's and other connections to backbone providers like Oarnet, Level 3, and such are insanely expensive. This is why they bundle Internet with more profitable services. Once you start using over 100-150GB, those profit margins dry up, and going over 200GB means they start losing a lot of money. Businesses need to pay their workers, and therefore you have caps.

I'm not trying to be a jerk, a know-it-all, or belittle anyone that uses a lot of bandwidth every month, I'm just trying to give some idea what it's like from your ISP's point of view. Extreme users are honestly not all that common, and they tend to congregate in tech forums (like this place!).
 

dabuddha

Lifer
Apr 10, 2000
19,579
17
81
Did you read that link? If you watch every red sox game (27 of them) in a month, you've still used less than 100gb.

I should have combined my posts. My point was I watch every Ranger's game so that alone will constitute 150 gig a month. My kids and my wife hit up netflix daily plus whatever other downloading/streaming I do. When my parents come to stay with us for awhile, they love to watch movies in my home theater via netflix.
 

SunnyD

Belgian Waffler
Jan 2, 2001
32,674
145
106
www.neftastic.com
I'm speaking from experience and inside knowledge of the logistics of delivering home Internet service.

If a sample of, say, 95000 users doesn't get anywhere near a 250 GB cap, then that's a pretty good sample to say this behavior isn't common. Also most ISP's allow you to get higher caps with higher service plans, so if you're going to be that heavy of a user, you should pay for it. We have corporations running servers on their connection that don't go over 100GB a month.

Profit margins on residential Internet is razor thin (I'm talking like a couple of bucks profit per customer). The infrastructure of supply cable or DSL is most likely already paid for, but the OC-48's and other connections to backbone providers like Oarnet, Level 3, and such are insanely expensive. This is why they bundle Internet with more profitable services. Once you start using over 100-150GB, those profit margins dry up, and going over 200GB means they start losing a lot of money. Businesses need to pay their workers, and therefore you have caps.

I'm not trying to be a jerk, a know-it-all, or belittle anyone that uses a lot of bandwidth every month, I'm just trying to give some idea what it's like from your ISP's point of view. Extreme users are honestly not all that common, and they tend to congregate in tech forums (like this place!).

:)

I hear you on the business side of things. You are absolutely correct from that standpoint, and you have to admit I called you out on it and you quite literally explained exactly that point I made. This is a profit-driven business decision. That's all. Nothing more, nothing less.

It's exactly the reason I thought long and hard (TWSS) last week about picking up the stellar deal Comcast Business was offering me on business class internet (50/10 uncapped "guaranteed bandwidth" for $79.90 month with the price locked in for the duration of whatever contract I go with). I wouldn't have to deal with shit like this.
 

Fritzo

Lifer
Jan 3, 2001
41,883
2,121
126
:)

I hear you on the business side of things. You are absolutely correct from that standpoint, and you have to admit I called you out on it and you quite literally explained exactly that point I made. This is a profit-driven business decision. That's all. Nothing more, nothing less.

It's exactly the reason I thought long and hard (TWSS) last week about picking up the stellar deal Comcast Business was offering me on business class internet (50/10 uncapped "guaranteed bandwidth" for $79.90 month with the price locked in for the duration of whatever contract I go with). I wouldn't have to deal with shit like this.

$80 for a 10Mb upload is an excellent deal. I wish we could offer that pricing!
 

Juddog

Diamond Member
Dec 11, 2006
7,852
6
81
People saying watching 5 hours of HD movies a day is ridiculous - have you ever considered that some people have families? You know - more than one person in the house that uses the internet?

Furthermore there are a ton of services that are trying to push everything to "the cloud" nowadays; the more of these services you have, the more bandwidth you use.
 

ImpulsE69

Lifer
Jan 8, 2010
14,946
1,077
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If you're watching 5 hours of movies 30 days a week, yeah, there's a problem with you :D

Anyway, the vast majority of people do not do this. The only people that seem to complain about caps are those 1) doing something wrong, 2) doing something the service wasn't designed for, or 3) Having too many geek factors going on.

Land line Internet is no different than an all you can eat buffet. Go ahead and gorge yourself silly. However, if you start showing up with boxes to take stuff home, you're going to be asked to knock it off.

OMG I love it. Here we go with the I don't do it so neither should anyone else trolling.

I forgot, a few people know whats good for everyone else. :rolleyes:

It's a money grab plain and simple. PERIOD. It really does not matter how much data a person uses. That's what the speed caps are for. If I use that speed cap 24/7, it really doesn't matter. They aren't out anything. It's a BS push and they are fvcking the customers.

But of course, always those few who think "well I don't do it so why would you". Same sh!t for nearly EVERY conversation in these forums, a bunch of self centered self absorbed a55hats. :p Common sense doesn't run deep in this place. It doesn't matter that YOU work for an ISP. Your reasoning is typical drivel laid out by corporate. Companies have the government wrapped around their fingers. Do you think a customer could walk in and say "well staring tomorrow I'm only paying you $5 a month for my service"? Hell no.

It's the same stuff Verizon pulled with their "unlimited" crap. It's not about if people are using it or not, it's about businesses thinking they can use marketing speak and then fvck over their customers at will. Companies don't pull these kind of things if consumers actually had some sort of choice, but much like gasoline, they know people are in positions these days that either putting up with it or going without internet is a pretty big decision.

(Oh PS. I used to work for Mediacom too).
 
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StrangerGuy

Diamond Member
May 9, 2004
8,443
124
106
OMG I love it. Here we go with the I don't do it so neither should anyone else trolling.

I forgot, a few people know whats good for everyone else. :rolleyes:

It's a money grab plain and simple. PERIOD.

How much is the ISPs paying him to shill, I wanna join too.
 

Fritzo

Lifer
Jan 3, 2001
41,883
2,121
126
How much is the ISPs paying him to shill, I wanna join too.

Not shilling at all. I always see a bunch of people complaining about caps, and I have inside info on why caps are in place, so I'm sharing the other side of the story. Businesses don't cater to everyone, only to customers they can make money on. That's why guidelines are set. If you don't fit into a set of guidelines that makes the business profitable, you need to find another solution.

Don't get this confused with corporate greed. Wireless providers are very guilty of this because of their extreme growth (especially Verizon). By all rights, if the profit margins on wireless data plans and landline connections were on the same scale, your wireless data plan would be around $10/month for 5GB of data. Pair this with fake fees and deceptive pricing structures, by comparison cable and DSL providers are a fantastic deal.

Like I said about the OP- if terms in a contract were changed, he should be able to get out of the contract, but I'm not sure where else he's going to go as 250GB is pretty standard on lower end cable service now.

Hell no it isn't. There are companies offering 1 Gb for $80 a month - 10 Mbps for the same cost is utter crap!

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...the-unlikely-success-of-californias-sonicnet/

I'm not sure how they can get that pricing for that speed unless they're doing something funny on the backend. Wholesale that type of connection should run the provider more than that for maintenance, bandwidth, licensing, equipment, and other stuff.
 
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Juddog

Diamond Member
Dec 11, 2006
7,852
6
81
Not shilling at all. I always see a bunch of people complaining about caps, and I have inside info on why caps are in place, so I'm sharing the other side of the story. Businesses don't cater to everyone, only to customers they can make money on. That's why guidelines are set. If you don't fit into a set of guidelines that makes the business profitable, you need to find another solution.

Don't get this confused with corporate greed. Wireless providers are very guilty of this because of their extreme growth (especially Verizon). By all rights, if the profit margins on wireless data plans and landline connections were on the same scale, your wireless data plan would be around $10/month for 5GB of data. Pair this with fake fees and deceptive pricing structures, by comparison cable and DSL providers are a fantastic deal.

Like I said about the OP- if terms in a contract were changed, he should be able to get out of the contract, but I'm not sure where else he's going to go as 250GB is pretty standard on lower end cable service now.

The whole point of the thread is that a business cannot just arbitrarily change it's contract and then charge you ETF for leaving for not agreeing with the new contract. That is straight up illegal.
 

Juddog

Diamond Member
Dec 11, 2006
7,852
6
81
I'm not sure how they can get that pricing for that speed unless they're doing something funny on the backend. Wholesale that type of connection should run the provider more than that for maintenance, bandwidth, licensing, equipment, and other stuff.

If by doing something "funny", you mean sinking money into their infrastructure instead of spending it on different ways to charge the customer ever increasing amounts for the same service, then yes they're doing something "funny".
 

Fritzo

Lifer
Jan 3, 2001
41,883
2,121
126
The whole point of the thread is that a business cannot just arbitrarily change it's contract and then charge you ETF for leaving for not agreeing with the new contract. That is straight up illegal.

And I totally agree.
 

rudeguy

Lifer
Dec 27, 2001
47,371
14
61
The whole point of the thread is that a business cannot just arbitrarily change it's contract and then charge you ETF for leaving for not agreeing with the new contract. That is straight up illegal.

no

The point of the thread is that the OP wants out of his contract for reasons not at all related to the change in contract.

The change in his contract has nothing to do with the ETF if the change in contract is not the reason for leaving.