Metered Bandwidth Coming to a City Near You!

[musicman64]

I had a small dinky local cable company that gave a 25gb cap until this morning... It was completely infuriating. Thankfully a competitor moved into the area =)

 

[ebaycj]

Originally posted by: Skoorb
It's not surprising. It's fair if anything. That said, my internet use has always been well below any kind of cap limit. Until I got streaming netflix. Now I imagine I irritate my ISP. I surely hope that if this goes huge we can see proper competition bring the prices to where they should be.

That's the whole reason they're doing this. The cable companies (also TV over fiber companies) are really really really worried that in short order you will be able to consume all your television needs for free (or very inexpensively) from another party, over your internet connection. That would significantly reduce / eliminate their Cable TV revenues, as well as their "local advertising" revenues.

It's all about the money.

 

[sandorski]

Originally posted by: ebaycj

Originally posted by: Skoorb
It's not surprising. It's fair if anything. That said, my internet use has always been well below any kind of cap limit. Until I got streaming netflix. Now I imagine I irritate my ISP. I surely hope that if this goes huge we can see proper competition bring the prices to where they should be.

That's the whole reason they're doing this. The cable companies (also TV over fiber companies) are really really really worried that in short order you will be able to consume all your television needs for free (or very inexpensively) from another party, over your internet connection. That would significantly reduce / eliminate their Cable TV revenues, as well as their "local advertising" revenues.

It's all about the money.

If that's the case, I can't blame them. I suspect it's more than that, but either way they need to make enough $ to maintain all those systems.

 

[freegeeks]

the funny thing is that here in Belgium, ISP's are making the switch from imposing caps to offering unlimited.

 

[ebaycj]

Originally posted by: sandorski

Originally posted by: ebaycj

Originally posted by: Skoorb
It's not surprising. It's fair if anything. That said, my internet use has always been well below any kind of cap limit. Until I got streaming netflix. Now I imagine I irritate my ISP. I surely hope that if this goes huge we can see proper competition bring the prices to where they should be.

That's the whole reason they're doing this. The cable companies (also TV over fiber companies) are really really really worried that in short order you will be able to consume all your television needs for free (or very inexpensively) from another party, over your internet connection. That would significantly reduce / eliminate their Cable TV revenues, as well as their "local advertising" revenues.

It's all about the money.

If that's the case, I can't blame them. I suspect it's more than that, but either way they need to make enough $ to maintain all those systems.

Also, it's not like they AREN'T making more than enough to maintain / upgrade the network(s), while still making a profit.

They are just worried that in the future their balance sheets won't look so rosy, and are worried about the long term strength of their stock(s).

 

[StageLeft]

Rochester Time Warner, a local article said today, has committed to doing this and rolling it out this fall. If I end up paying more I'll cancel my phone or cable (both also through them). I already pay $155/month. I am not paying more.

That's quite a lot better than TW, but for a serious usenetter, 250GB is nothing.

You mean serious pornographer. I didn't look at the math super super closely but at Christmas I figured watching a LOT of netflix streaming tv I was still only hitting 100 gb month amount. Throw games and things on top I'd have a hell of a time hitting 200.

cable companies must be scared about hulu and the like, but I don't know if it's going to work to try and scare people back to them. In my case, I truly will just pay the more for the internet and can my cable, if I have to choose between one of the two. Somebody who's into the internet is not going to stop that because of costs when they have an option to simply eschew something else.

 

[alchemize]

HD torrents (mostly blu-ray rips). 5-10 GB each.

 

[Vette73]

Originally posted by: sandorski
How does one use 40gb of Bandwidth in one day?? My limit is 40gb and I usually only use half that in a Month.

A lot of people have netflix streaming, hulu, etc... So 40gig could be uised very quickly.

That and 40gig is only for the fastest option. So going through 40gig will not take long if you have kids and/or more then 1 Xbox/system streaming hulu/netflix/etc...

 

[Lotheron]

Originally posted by: Skoorb
Rochester Time Warner, a local article said today, has committed to doing this and rolling it out this fall. If I end up paying more I'll cancel my phone or cable (both also through them). I already pay $155/month. I am not paying more.

That's quite a lot better than TW, but for a serious usenetter, 250GB is nothing.

You mean serious pornographer. I didn't look at the math super super closely but at Christmas I figured watching a LOT of netflix streaming tv I was still only hitting 100 gb month amount. Throw games and things on top I'd have a hell of a time hitting 200.

cable companies must be scared about hulu and the like, but I don't know if it's going to work to try and scare people back to them. In my case, I truly will just pay the more for the internet and can my cable, if I have to choose between one of the two. Somebody who's into the internet is not going to stop that because of costs when they have an option to simply eschew something else.

The real issue is they have figured out that unless they do something about data usage, they are going to continue to lose TV customers as they switch to Internet Only accounts.

I am in one of the cities they are expanding to first. I just closed on a house and had timewarner cable (internet only) installed. What a waste of $40 for the install fee. I already called ATT and am switching to Uverse. Hopefully they keep their hands out of the metered bandwidth for a while.

On the bright side, it is $5 a month cheaper an only 1Mbit slower.

 

[fleshconsumed]

Originally posted by: JS80
I use like less than 1% of that cap. Can I sell the bandwidth I don't use to people who might go over?

ROFLMAO, unless you're using Pine for email, I doubt very much you're using 400MB per month.

Although it's not really surprising coming from you.

Do yourself a favor and run "netstat -e" from command prompt at the end of the day, you'll be surprised. Your results might be skewed if you have LAN, but it should give you general idea how much you use.

 

[Robor]

I don't use that much but I want it available if I do choose to. If my provider capped my bandwidth I'd switch to a competitor (if possible). Luckily we have 2 options - Verizon FiOS and RoadRunner - and AFAIK neither is capping right now.

 

[Lotheron]

Originally posted by: Robor
I don't use that much but I want it available if I do choose to. If my provider capped my bandwidth I'd switch to a competitor (if possible). Luckily we have 2 options - Verizon FiOS and RoadRunner - and AFAIK neither is capping right now.

You do realize that Roadrunner = TimeWarner?

 

[NeoV]

Are Blue-Ray rips really that popular?

250 GB is nothing for a serious usenetter? There aren't that many new movies each month, or music for that matter - I would be very curious to see what the heck people are downloading that exceeds that amount on a monthly basis.

Note that I'm not saying I'm at all in favor of these caps - in fact TWC can kiss my business goodbye, they just upped my cable/phone/internet pricing by 44 a month, and their 'retention specialist' told me that was the best he could do.

 

[jpeyton]

I praise Jesus for our daily FIOS.

 

[frostedflakes]

Originally posted by: NeoV
Are Blue-Ray rips really that popular?

250 GB is nothing for a serious usenetter? There aren't that many new movies each month, or music for that matter - I would be very curious to see what the heck people are downloading that exceeds that amount on a monthly basis.

Note that I'm not saying I'm at all in favor of these caps - in fact TWC can kiss my business goodbye, they just upped my cable/phone/internet pricing by 44 a month, and their 'retention specialist' told me that was the best he could do.

Lol yeah that's why I don't really have a problem with something like a 250GB cap, because, come on.. does a person really need to download dozens of Blu-Ray rips a month? I think caps would make people much frugal with their downloading, compared to unlimited usage where people just download stuff even if they aren't necessarily going to watch it. I know there are a lot of people who just collect movies and music for the sake of having it, there's no way they have the time to watch and listen to all of it.

 

[Aikouka]

I don't think even I could hit 250GB a month... I mean, I could if I tried, but my normal use doesn't put me that high.

It's a bit of a shame, because TWC has rather good service around here.

 

[Spcwright]

Hi this is my first post. I Live in Rochester N.Y. one of the effected cities. around 90% of internet users here go through time warner. TWC has a monolpoly here....the media says "virtual monopoly" its quite a bit more than "virtual". The only other alt. is Frontier DSL which is the "dial up" of today. Pretty much every medium to large city in NY state has FiOS except for Rochester NY. Hell our city had some of the first phone lines in the country and some of those lines are STILL Run under older buildings. The damn camera and photos were invented here (google "the world image(ing) center). You mean to tell me some small poodunk towns in NY have FiOS but not Rochester, Buffalo and Syracuse have FiOS they wont see TWC caps there, Rochester is literally smack in the middle of buffalo and syracuse, i dont know why FiOS isnt here ....I smell greed. The courts bashed Microsoft for its "monopoly" the majority of people and companies prefer windows i guess and its not M$ fault. Pardon me if i sound like idk wtf im talking about.

 

[FaaR]

This is of course nothing but moneygrubbing from the ISPs (whom are giant corporations for the most part).

The internet has never offered higher capacity than it does now. Bandwidth has never been cheaper than it is now. There's no congestion to speak of on their various networks and particulary not on the backbone connections either. Yet they must impose caps to survive? That's nothing but purest BS.

If we could make the internet work in the past without caps, then it will work today as well. Capping customers is a giant step backwards in the evolution of the 'net, it's only going to hold back the development in the US, and all for short-term monetary gains. Greed and stupidity always seem to go hand in hand in the corporate world - unfortunately.

What's to say they will even measure data fairly? They can dock subscribers two bytes for every byte transferred if they want to and who's to prove them wrong?! As already pointed out, there's no physical meter installed that shows actual "consumption".

I don't use that much bandwidth (don't stream much, and I don't pirate stuff), but I'd terminate my contract immediately if a cap was imposed. It's the principle - I don't want a damocles sword hanging over my head for no technical reason whatsoever, even if I never get even close to the cap.

 

[spidey07]

Originally posted by: Spcwright
Hi this is my first post. I Live in Rochester N.Y. one of the effected cities. around 90% of internet users here go through time warner. TWC has a monolpoly here....the media says "virtual monopoly" its quite a bit more than "virtual". The only other alt. is Frontier DSL which is the "dial up" of today. Pretty much every medium to large city in NY state has FiOS except for Rochester NY. Hell our city had some of the first phone lines in the country and some of those lines are STILL Run under older buildings. The damn camera and photos were invented here (google "the world image(ing) center). You mean to tell me some small poodunk towns in NY have FiOS but not Rochester, Buffalo and Syracuse have FiOS they wont see TWC caps there, Rochester is literally smack in the middle of buffalo and syracuse, i dont know why FiOS isnt here ....I smell greed. The courts bashed Microsoft for its "monopoly" the majority of people and companies prefer windows i guess and its not M$ fault. Pardon me if i sound like idk wtf im talking about.

Then call your local public utility commission and mail the mayor. They're the ones preventing it, unless of course you just don't have the subscribers FIOS needs. Oh and contact Verizon as well. Maybe get a real signed petition (no internet one) going and present it to the folks I mentioned.

 

[Adam8281]

I'm a TW customer in Raleigh (about an hour from Greenville where they are rolling out caps), and as soon as I read about this I immediately wrote an e-mail to TW, explaining why caps are unfair and bad idea, and saying that the moment caps roll out in my area I will switch to Verizon DSL

 

[shira]

Originally posted by: Skoorb
Rochester Time Warner, a local article said today, has committed to doing this and rolling it out this fall. If I end up paying more I'll cancel my phone or cable (both also through them). I already pay $155/month. I am not paying more.

That's quite a lot better than TW, but for a serious usenetter, 250GB is nothing.

You mean serious pornographer. I didn't look at the math super super closely but at Christmas I figured watching a LOT of netflix streaming tv I was still only hitting 100 gb month amount. Throw games and things on top I'd have a hell of a time hitting 200.

cable companies must be scared about hulu and the like, but I don't know if it's going to work to try and scare people back to them. In my case, I truly will just pay the more for the internet and can my cable, if I have to choose between one of the two. Somebody who's into the internet is not going to stop that because of costs when they have an option to simply eschew something else.

You're forgetting DVD- and HD-quality movies at 4.5GB (DVD5) to 8.5 GB (DVD9) to 25+ GB (Blu-ray) a pop. Download 100 of those a month and you could be in the terabyte range.

 

[shira]

Originally posted by: NeoV
Are Blue-Ray rips really that popular?

250 GB is nothing for a serious usenetter? There aren't that many new movies each month, or music for that matter - I would be very curious to see what the heck people are downloading that exceeds that amount on a monthly basis.

Note that I'm not saying I'm at all in favor of these caps - in fact TWC can kiss my business goodbye, they just upped my cable/phone/internet pricing by 44 a month, and their 'retention specialist' told me that was the best he could do.

"New" movies? You're forgetting that movies have been made since at least 1915, with "soundies" since 1929. Why on earth would a serious usenetter movie-buff limit themselves to new films?

And there are loads of other videos than mainstream movies. I had a co-worker who was majorly into anime. He had 12 terabytes of the stuff at the time I knew him, and he'd been at it for about 3 years. That's almost 350GB a month. But who's counting?

 

[frostedflakes]

Originally posted by: shira

Originally posted by: Skoorb
Rochester Time Warner, a local article said today, has committed to doing this and rolling it out this fall. If I end up paying more I'll cancel my phone or cable (both also through them). I already pay $155/month. I am not paying more.

That's quite a lot better than TW, but for a serious usenetter, 250GB is nothing.

You mean serious pornographer. I didn't look at the math super super closely but at Christmas I figured watching a LOT of netflix streaming tv I was still only hitting 100 gb month amount. Throw games and things on top I'd have a hell of a time hitting 200.

cable companies must be scared about hulu and the like, but I don't know if it's going to work to try and scare people back to them. In my case, I truly will just pay the more for the internet and can my cable, if I have to choose between one of the two. Somebody who's into the internet is not going to stop that because of costs when they have an option to simply eschew something else.

You're forgetting DVD- and HD-quality movies at 4.5GB (DVD5) to 8.5 GB (DVD9) to 25+ GB (Blu-ray) a pop. Download 100 of those a month and you could be in the terabyte range.

Except that there's no legal service that offers DVD-ROM or BD-ROM downloads.

Don't get me wrong, I download as well, but it's hard for me to feel sorry for people going over caps because of illegal activity.

 

[brandonbull]

I gots me some FIOS. In your face, bandwidth limited bitches!

 

[frostedflakes]

FiOS may implement them eventually. But for now Verizon probably has more bandwidth than they know what to do with.