Time Warner bandwidth caps arrive (updated)

[Foxery]

Hmm... in the Northeast, Time Warner customers actually get to choose whether their ISP is RoadRunner (TWC) or EarthLink, which is a seperate company with some kind of line sharing agreement. Smart users go with EarthLink, because the service level is higher and the terms of service can be different, for the same price. Actually sometimes less, due to promotional deals. I get 2x the bandwidth and 2X more web hosting space, for instance, yet my bill still comes with TWC printed on it.

This may provide a breather for some of us, if RoadRunner imposes limits but EarthLink does not.

And yes, their current choices for # of GB is poorly chosen and very short-sighted, as is the severity of the cost of going over.

 

[Adam8281]

...If I could pay 5 dollars more per month to get rid of all the entitlement assholes, I'd gladly pay it. GO OUTSIDE and stop downloading porn. 40gb a month is fucking ridiculous.

"640K is more memory than anyone will ever need."~Bill Gates

 

[isekii]

Originally posted by: Foxery
Hmm... in the Northeast, Time Warner customers actually get to choose whether their ISP is RoadRunner (TWC) or EarthLink, which is a seperate company with some kind of line sharing agreement. Smart users go with EarthLink, because the service level is higher and the terms of service can be different, for the same price. Actually sometimes less, due to promotional deals. I get 2x the bandwidth and 2X more web hosting space, for instance, yet my bill still comes with TWC printed on it.

This may provide a breather for some of us, if RoadRunner imposes limits but EarthLink does not.

And yes, their current choices for # of GB is poorly chosen and very short-sighted, as is the severity of the cost of going over.

I see it as them trying to profit from overages.

40gb is extremely small if you think about it.

Nowadays, a lot of the TV shows are streamed so that you can watch it whenever. Not to mention games, online trailers in HD, porn etc..

 

[RichardE]

Originally posted by: isekii

Originally posted by: Foxery
Hmm... in the Northeast, Time Warner customers actually get to choose whether their ISP is RoadRunner (TWC) or EarthLink, which is a seperate company with some kind of line sharing agreement. Smart users go with EarthLink, because the service level is higher and the terms of service can be different, for the same price. Actually sometimes less, due to promotional deals. I get 2x the bandwidth and 2X more web hosting space, for instance, yet my bill still comes with TWC printed on it.

This may provide a breather for some of us, if RoadRunner imposes limits but EarthLink does not.

And yes, their current choices for # of GB is poorly chosen and very short-sighted, as is the severity of the cost of going over.

I see it as them trying to profit from overages.

40gb is extremely small if you think about it.

Nowadays, a lot of the TV shows are streamed so that you can watch it whenever. Not to mention games, online trailers in HD, porn in HD etc..

:beer:

 

[QueBert]

Originally posted by: MrDudeMan
Most people don't use nearly 40gb per month.

40gb per month is 133mb per hour for 10 hours a day every day. I played WoW last night for 5 hours while watching YouTube videos on my other monitor basically the entire time and I still didn't use 100mb.

I hope every ISP does this so the assholes who are using all the bandwith can start paying for it. I haven't even come close to 40gb in a month even when I was pirating software frequently. I haven't downloaded anything in the last year other than free map packs or updates and I still barely hit 5gb per month.

do you care in the process the $$$ you pay for internet will go up? and for the record

1 hour of youtube would be over 100 megs on it's own, if you watched youtube + played WOW for 5 hours straight I would estimate your bandwidth to be around 650-700 megs, more if you're doing raids in WOW.

You'd be @ about 1/2 of your monthly bandwidth if you used your internet for nothing else but WOW + Youtube nightly.

40 gigs ain't shit, any ways enjoy your higher rates and capped bandwidth you're wishing for, because you'll probably get it.

 

[QueBert]

Originally posted by: Flammable
let's admit it though, it's a great way to stop piracy

it's not though, TW will obviously allow over 40 gigs of bandwidth if the customer wants to pay, if it's similar to web hosting it will probably be about $1 per gig. So a pirate who was @ his cap limit has the choice, pay $4 bucks to download a 4 gig torrent of a new game, or go to Best Buy and pay $40-$50 for same game. Piracy will always still be cheaper so it will be the route the pirates who pirated before the caps continue to go.

I see TW making a KILLING off overages though, I know people who damn near watch youtube all day, and they go for the higher quality streams. That alone would be probably 50 gigs a month.

 

[Crucial]

Originally posted by: Fritzo

Originally posted by: Xavier434

Originally posted by: Fritzo

Originally posted by: Anubis
caps not good, way to low



http://arstechnica.com/news.ar...width-caps-arrive.html

40GB is HUGE!!!!! We service 200 employee corporations that only use 30GB/month. Turn off Bit Torrent and it won't be an issue.

I work for a big ISP- only .4% of our customers go over 10GB per month. The ones that do are impacting the network for other users, causing the need for more infrastructure and bandwidth. If those .4% are causing the other 99.6% slowness, would you expect an ISP to :

A) Charge higher fees to everyone
B) Make the heavy users pay more

I know which one seems fair to me.

Please explain how your ISP is having such problems if 99.6% of your paying customers are not using hardly any bandwidth? Their lack of usage combined should more than satisfy those other 0.4% of your users. Something isn't adding up right here at all.

Also, I say that if ISPs are going to charge more for additional bandwidth then they need to refund those for every bit of bandwidth that they do not use which is under their set cap.

I'll be glad to explain. Say you have a 100Mb pipe from an ATM. If you have 10 people at 10Mb running full bore 24/7, it's going to screw everyone else using that pipe.

Also, your refund suggestion is stupid. I'm sure your phone company, cell phone company, and cable TV company are going to refund you for unused services too.

Funny you should mention that. My cell phone company does rollover my unused minutes every month.

 

[EarthwormJim]

If they're really bleeding money, they should be charging people based on infrastructure.

That is, the rural farm communities, where the cable companies get very few subscribers per foot of cable they have to lay.

 

[QueBert]

Originally posted by: Crucial

Originally posted by: Fritzo

Originally posted by: Xavier434

Originally posted by: Fritzo

Originally posted by: Anubis
caps not good, way to low



http://arstechnica.com/news.ar...width-caps-arrive.html

40GB is HUGE!!!!! We service 200 employee corporations that only use 30GB/month. Turn off Bit Torrent and it won't be an issue.

I work for a big ISP- only .4% of our customers go over 10GB per month. The ones that do are impacting the network for other users, causing the need for more infrastructure and bandwidth. If those .4% are causing the other 99.6% slowness, would you expect an ISP to :

A) Charge higher fees to everyone
B) Make the heavy users pay more

I know which one seems fair to me.

Please explain how your ISP is having such problems if 99.6% of your paying customers are not using hardly any bandwidth? Their lack of usage combined should more than satisfy those other 0.4% of your users. Something isn't adding up right here at all.

Also, I say that if ISPs are going to charge more for additional bandwidth then they need to refund those for every bit of bandwidth that they do not use which is under their set cap.

I'll be glad to explain. Say you have a 100Mb pipe from an ATM. If you have 10 people at 10Mb running full bore 24/7, it's going to screw everyone else using that pipe.

Also, your refund suggestion is stupid. I'm sure your phone company, cell phone company, and cable TV company are going to refund you for unused services too.

Funny you should mention that. My cell phone company does rollover my unused minutes every month.

AT&T does that because they charge so much for the minutes in the first place, you can get 2x the minutes somewhere else for the same price, no they won't roll over. But you don't need them to when you got double to start with. Cingular was smart for doing that, it seems like a great deal.

at the time I had Sprint, 1000 minutes for $59 bucks a month
with Cingular I would have gotten 450 min for the same price.

 

[DrPizza]

I'd be willing to bet that the bandwidth caps catch on everywhere. However, over time, the caps will increase.

LOL at all the people who think it'll work to vote by going to another company. The vast majority of users will have no problem with a 40GB bandwidth. I'm on a 12GB cap using satellite; I'd love it to be a bit higher, but doubt that even with streaming audio that I'd hit 40GB.


The effects of the abusers switching to another ISP:
1. The ISP who loses those customers ends up with even higher profit margins and better service for the customers who don't leave thm.
2. The ISP who gains the new abusers is going to say "wtf?! Our number of users increased by 10%, but the total bandwidth used just doubled!" If anything, jumping from Time Warner to other ISP's because of the cap will actually cause other ISP's to re-evaluate their lack of caps.

 

[Crucial]

Originally posted by: QueBert

Originally posted by: Crucial

Originally posted by: Fritzo

Originally posted by: Xavier434

Originally posted by: Fritzo

Originally posted by: Anubis
caps not good, way to low



http://arstechnica.com/news.ar...width-caps-arrive.html

40GB is HUGE!!!!! We service 200 employee corporations that only use 30GB/month. Turn off Bit Torrent and it won't be an issue.

I work for a big ISP- only .4% of our customers go over 10GB per month. The ones that do are impacting the network for other users, causing the need for more infrastructure and bandwidth. If those .4% are causing the other 99.6% slowness, would you expect an ISP to :

A) Charge higher fees to everyone
B) Make the heavy users pay more

I know which one seems fair to me.

Please explain how your ISP is having such problems if 99.6% of your paying customers are not using hardly any bandwidth? Their lack of usage combined should more than satisfy those other 0.4% of your users. Something isn't adding up right here at all.

Also, I say that if ISPs are going to charge more for additional bandwidth then they need to refund those for every bit of bandwidth that they do not use which is under their set cap.

I'll be glad to explain. Say you have a 100Mb pipe from an ATM. If you have 10 people at 10Mb running full bore 24/7, it's going to screw everyone else using that pipe.

Also, your refund suggestion is stupid. I'm sure your phone company, cell phone company, and cable TV company are going to refund you for unused services too.

Funny you should mention that. My cell phone company does rollover my unused minutes every month.

AT&T does that because they charge so much for the minutes in the first place, you can get 2x the minutes somewhere else for the same price, no they won't roll over. But you don't need them to when you got double to start with. Cingular was smart for doing that, it seems like a great deal.

at the time I had Sprint, 1000 minutes for $59 bucks a month
with Cingular I would have gotten 450 min for the same price.

Not sure where you live but around here it's pretty much all the same. $39.99 for 450 minutes. Tmobile shows 600 minutes for $39.99.

For $59.99 I get 450 rollover minutes plus unlimited data on my iphone with ATT.

Try again?

 

[AMDZen]

Originally posted by: Crucial

Originally posted by: Fritzo

Originally posted by: Xavier434

Originally posted by: Fritzo

Originally posted by: Anubis
caps not good, way to low



http://arstechnica.com/news.ar...width-caps-arrive.html

40GB is HUGE!!!!! We service 200 employee corporations that only use 30GB/month. Turn off Bit Torrent and it won't be an issue.

I work for a big ISP- only .4% of our customers go over 10GB per month. The ones that do are impacting the network for other users, causing the need for more infrastructure and bandwidth. If those .4% are causing the other 99.6% slowness, would you expect an ISP to :

A) Charge higher fees to everyone
B) Make the heavy users pay more

I know which one seems fair to me.

Please explain how your ISP is having such problems if 99.6% of your paying customers are not using hardly any bandwidth? Their lack of usage combined should more than satisfy those other 0.4% of your users. Something isn't adding up right here at all.

Also, I say that if ISPs are going to charge more for additional bandwidth then they need to refund those for every bit of bandwidth that they do not use which is under their set cap.

I'll be glad to explain. Say you have a 100Mb pipe from an ATM. If you have 10 people at 10Mb running full bore 24/7, it's going to screw everyone else using that pipe.

Also, your refund suggestion is stupid. I'm sure your phone company, cell phone company, and cable TV company are going to refund you for unused services too.

Funny you should mention that. My cell phone company does rollover my unused minutes every month.

My newsgroup service does as well. I get 10 GB a month and anything I don't use is rolled over to the next month. I always have extra that gets rolled over

 

[torpid]

Let's start with the low-end limit of 5gb, which is plain absurd. They are basically scamming people into buying the next highest tier (which is not mentioned in the linked article). That's about two hours a day of YouTube videos or FPS.

As for 40gb... from what I gather they are capping you to something like 0.009% of your available usage.

Assuming the service is 15 megabits/sec and not megabytes as indicated in the article: 15mbps / 8bits/byte * 60sec/min * 60min * 6 hours = 40.5gb. So you get only about 6 hours of use.

At 768k you at least get about 15 hours of use before hitting your cap.

 

[Turin39789]

how many hundreds of billions of dollars of upgrades did we pay for through our taxes that never happened?

 

[Special K]

I'm going to search for a bandwidth monitor tonight. Hopefully there will be a freeware program available. Heck, maybe winXP or my Linksys WRT54GL already has this functionality built in. I want to track my actual bandwidth usage for a month and see exactly what I am using. If it's well shy of 40 GB, then I guess I can quit worrying about this, because I do currently use TWC in TX.

 

[Turin39789]

Originally posted by: Crucial

Originally posted by: QueBert

Originally posted by: Crucial

Originally posted by: Fritzo

Originally posted by: Xavier434

Originally posted by: Fritzo

Originally posted by: Anubis
caps not good, way to low



http://arstechnica.com/news.ar...width-caps-arrive.html

40GB is HUGE!!!!! We service 200 employee corporations that only use 30GB/month. Turn off Bit Torrent and it won't be an issue.

I work for a big ISP- only .4% of our customers go over 10GB per month. The ones that do are impacting the network for other users, causing the need for more infrastructure and bandwidth. If those .4% are causing the other 99.6% slowness, would you expect an ISP to :

A) Charge higher fees to everyone
B) Make the heavy users pay more

I know which one seems fair to me.

Please explain how your ISP is having such problems if 99.6% of your paying customers are not using hardly any bandwidth? Their lack of usage combined should more than satisfy those other 0.4% of your users. Something isn't adding up right here at all.

Also, I say that if ISPs are going to charge more for additional bandwidth then they need to refund those for every bit of bandwidth that they do not use which is under their set cap.

I'll be glad to explain. Say you have a 100Mb pipe from an ATM. If you have 10 people at 10Mb running full bore 24/7, it's going to screw everyone else using that pipe.

Also, your refund suggestion is stupid. I'm sure your phone company, cell phone company, and cable TV company are going to refund you for unused services too.

Funny you should mention that. My cell phone company does rollover my unused minutes every month.

AT&T does that because they charge so much for the minutes in the first place, you can get 2x the minutes somewhere else for the same price, no they won't roll over. But you don't need them to when you got double to start with. Cingular was smart for doing that, it seems like a great deal.

at the time I had Sprint, 1000 minutes for $59 bucks a month
with Cingular I would have gotten 450 min for the same price.

Not sure where you live but around here it's pretty much all the same. $39.99 for 450 minutes. Tmobile shows 600 minutes for $39.99.

For $59.99 I get 450 rollover minutes plus unlimited data on my iphone with ATT.

Try again?

for 30 I get unlimited data, unlimited roaming, unlimited text, nights at 7, unlimited n&w and 500 minutes.

and I get a 20% off that through my work, so under $30 after taxes and fees

 

[shabby]

Wow you yanks are getting jipped, even up here in canadia our caps are reasonable at 100gigs for $50 from rogers cable. Thankfully i cancelled and went with dsl at $30/month with 200gigs cap, while $40 gets you unlimited, and thats not even the cheapest you can go.

 

[isekii]

Originally posted by: shabby
Wow you yanks are getting jipped, even up here in canadia our caps are reasonable at 100gigs for $50 from rogers cable. Thankfully i cancelled and went with dsl at $30/month with 200gigs cap, while $40 gets you unlimited, and thats not even the cheapest you can go.

Sorry but us yanks aren't capped yet.
We're still so far "unlimited."

They are doing a test market in some bum fuck texas town, hopefully it won't do so well.

 

[MrDudeMan]

Originally posted by: QueBert

Originally posted by: MrDudeMan
Most people don't use nearly 40gb per month.

40gb per month is 133mb per hour for 10 hours a day every day. I played WoW last night for 5 hours while watching YouTube videos on my other monitor basically the entire time and I still didn't use 100mb.

I hope every ISP does this so the assholes who are using all the bandwith can start paying for it. I haven't even come close to 40gb in a month even when I was pirating software frequently. I haven't downloaded anything in the last year other than free map packs or updates and I still barely hit 5gb per month.

do you care in the process the $$$ you pay for internet will go up? and for the record

1 hour of youtube would be over 100 megs on it's own, if you watched youtube + played WOW for 5 hours straight I would estimate your bandwidth to be around 650-700 megs, more if you're doing raids in WOW.

You'd be @ about 1/2 of your monthly bandwidth if you used your internet for nothing else but WOW + Youtube nightly.

40 gigs ain't shit, any ways enjoy your higher rates and capped bandwidth you're wishing for, because you'll probably get it.

Bring on the capped bandwith so morons like you will start paying for the 65Gb per month you are using. To quote you, "for the record" I play games daily either on my computer or Xbox Live, I watch youtube frequently, and I send pictures from my SLR to my family.

I have 15 internet enabled devices in my house which constantly are updating themselves including my TiVo and my universal remote that downloads updates every 3 hours in order to show the upcoming shows on every channel on the LCD. I use the internet with no reservations while I'm at home and neither does my wife. I present to you the conversation I just had with a Comcast rep over the online chat.

Anthony_(Tue Jun 03 2008 14:29:19 GMT-0600 (Mountain Daylight Time))>
i was curious if there is a way to check how much bandwith i use per month from the comcast website

Jeff(Tue Jun 03 2008 16:29:45 GMT-0600 (Mountain Daylight Time))>
Sorry, Comcast does not offer that feature at the current time.

Anthony_(Tue Jun 03 2008 14:30:15 GMT-0600 (Mountain Daylight Time))>
ok np, is there any way you could tell me how much i use on a monthly basis? i have 15 internet enabled devices in my home and im curious how much is being downloaded

Jeff(Tue Jun 03 2008 16:30:45 GMT-0600 (Mountain Daylight Time))>
Please give me a moment to access your account information.

Anthony_(Tue Jun 03 2008 14:31:20 GMT-0600 (Mountain Daylight Time))>
take your time. im also curious how much it would cost to upgrade my internet service. what is my current upload/download speed and how much faster is the next level up?

Jeff(Tue Jun 03 2008 16:32:21 GMT-0600 (Mountain Daylight Time))>
I show that you are on the promotional rate for 29.95/month for the Internet for 6 months. That service is normally 42.95/month. The maximum download is 6Mbps and 384kbps for upload.

Jeff(Tue Jun 03 2008 16:32:38 GMT-0600 (Mountain Daylight Time))>
The Speed Tier is 52.95/month and that would increase the bandwidth maximums to 8Mbps and 768kbps.

Jeff(Tue Jun 03 2008 16:33:09 GMT-0600 (Mountain Daylight Time))>
Your household used 8.2Gb during the month of May.

Anthony_(Tue Jun 03 2008 14:33:27 GMT-0600 (Mountain Daylight Time))>
is there a way for you to see an average over the past year?

Jeff(Tue Jun 03 2008 16:34:11 GMT-0600 (Mountain Daylight Time))>
Your monthly usage is consistently around 6.5Gb. Your peak usage occured during October of last year at 9.3Gb.

From this link

wow really? i just tested an hour of play, with only other thing using the internet being ichat and dashboard... only 2.51mb downloaded and 1.44mb uploaded.

From this link

about 5mb p/h

It'll use as much as it needs to as of somewhat recently, but that's not much at all.

If you're in places like Shatt, it'll use significantly more. But we're only on a scale of a few megabytes per hour still.

From this link

Heres a bandwidth log from my router. This was about 16 hours of WoW one day and browing the internet. No torrents, no newsgroups, no irc, this is the total both download and upload.

88.11 MB

88.11Mb / 16 hours = 5.5Mb per hour, which seems to be what everyone else is observing.

Therefore, your claim of 650-700Mb is flat out wrong.

 

[isekii]

Well that's because WOW usually downloads most of it's content so it runs off your computer.
So the initial play might be bigger but once it's downloaded it should be minimal. But what about other games that don't do something like this ?

 

[MrDudeMan]

Originally posted by: isekii
Well that's because WOW usually downloads most of it's content so it runs off your computer.
So the initial play might be bigger but once it's downloaded it should be minimal. But what about other games that don't do something like this ?

I was talking about my specific usage and WoW was the focus of my example.

I play lots of other games though and it is reflected in my monthly usage above.

 

[cubby1223]

Originally posted by: Crucial

Originally posted by: Fritzo
I'll be glad to explain. Say you have a 100Mb pipe from an ATM. If you have 10 people at 10Mb running full bore 24/7, it's going to screw everyone else using that pipe.

Also, your refund suggestion is stupid. I'm sure your phone company, cell phone company, and cable TV company are going to refund you for unused services too.

Funny you should mention that. My cell phone company does rollover my unused minutes every month.

Rollover != refund

:roll:




Personally, I see nothing wrong with people paying for what they use. Why should someone pay the same price for 5gb a month, as someone who downloads 150gb a month? It's going to affect those who pirate most, so I really couldn't care less about them. And that's the fun part of it, they pirate because they don't like paying for things.

 

[frostedflakes]

Originally posted by: Fritzo

Originally posted by: Xavier434

Originally posted by: Fritzo

Originally posted by: Anubis
caps not good, way to low



http://arstechnica.com/news.ar...width-caps-arrive.html

40GB is HUGE!!!!! We service 200 employee corporations that only use 30GB/month. Turn off Bit Torrent and it won't be an issue.

I work for a big ISP- only .4% of our customers go over 10GB per month. The ones that do are impacting the network for other users, causing the need for more infrastructure and bandwidth. If those .4% are causing the other 99.6% slowness, would you expect an ISP to :

A) Charge higher fees to everyone
B) Make the heavy users pay more

I know which one seems fair to me.

Please explain how your ISP is having such problems if 99.6% of your paying customers are not using hardly any bandwidth? Their lack of usage combined should more than satisfy those other 0.4% of your users. Something isn't adding up right here at all.

Also, I say that if ISPs are going to charge more for additional bandwidth then they need to refund those for every bit of bandwidth that they do not use which is under their set cap.

I'll be glad to explain. Say you have a 100Mb pipe from an ATM. If you have 10 people at 10Mb running full bore 24/7, it's going to screw everyone else using that pipe.

Also, your refund suggestion is stupid. I'm sure your phone company, cell phone company, and cable TV company are going to refund you for unused services too.

I don't think that really answers his question.

Let's do a bit of math, according to this article, bandwidth in the UK costs about £0.5/GB, which is $0.98/GB. Of course this is kind of an apples to oranges comparison, but it jives with the $1/GB overcharge that TW is proposing, so let's stick with it.

This means that 99.6% of your customers are using $10 or less worth of bandwidth every month. How much are you charging these customers? $40? $50? That's a profit margin of a few hundred percent.

So let's say there are 100,000 subscribers in this region, assuming $40/mo subscription and all customers using 10GB/mo, the ISP is making $2.99 million dollars. Now, this leaves the 0.4% using >$10. With the bandwidth cost of $1/GB, they'd have to be using greater than 40GB/mo for the ISP to be losing money. Let's be unrealistic and assume they all use 1TB/mo. This means each of the 400 customers is costing the ISP $960/month, or $384,000 total. $3 million minus $400,000 is still a shitload of money.

So something here isn't right. Either a lot more people are "power users" than you're suggesting, or bandwidth is a lot more expensive than $1/mo.

EDIT: As far as network congestion goes, ISPs need to stop offering bandwidth they can't handle. I can understand monthly usage caps, but there's no reason a person shouldn't able to use 10Mbps whenever they want for as long as they want if that's what they're paying for. If ISPs can't handle that, they should start selling 5Mbps, or offer a "turbo" feature (i.e. 10Mbps temporary boost for say 10 minutes, but drops to 5Mbps after that to help keep the 24/7 downloaders from sucking up too much of the neighbors' bandwidth).

 

[spidey07]

Originally posted by: frostedflakes
I don't think that really answers his question.

Let's do a bit of math, according to this article, bandwidth in the UK costs about £0.5/GB, which is $0.98/GB. Of course this is kind of an apples to oranges comparison, but it jives with the $1/GB overcharge that TW is proposing, so let's stick with it.

This means that 99.6% of your customers are using $10 or less worth of bandwidth every month. How much are you charging these customers? $40? $50? That's a profit margin of a few hundred percent.

So let's say there are 100,000 subscribers in this region, assuming $40/mo subscription and all customers using 10GB/mo, the ISP is making $2.99 million dollars. Now, this leaves the 0.4% using >$10. With the bandwidth cost of $1/GB, they'd have to be using greater than 40GB/mo for the ISP to be losing money. Let's be unrealistic and assume they all use 1TB/mo. This means each of the 400 customers is costing the ISP $960/month, or $384,000 total. $3 million minus $400,000 is still a shitload of money.

So something here isn't right. Either a lot more people are "power users" than you're suggesting, or bandwidth is a lot more expensive than $1/mo.

It doesn't work like that. That's the wholesale price for the ISPs connection to the internet. It doesn't include all of the ISPs capital and operational expense of running and building their network. If you read the article this is mentioned.

-edit-
And it's a great article. Everybody should read to see just how expensive bandwidth really is. It's more expensive here in the states but the models are the same. Full article:
http://community.plus.net/blog...-the-cost-of-ipstream/

 

[frostedflakes]

Originally posted by: spidey07

Originally posted by: frostedflakes
I don't think that really answers his question.

Let's do a bit of math, according to this article, bandwidth in the UK costs about £0.5/GB, which is $0.98/GB. Of course this is kind of an apples to oranges comparison, but it jives with the $1/GB overcharge that TW is proposing, so let's stick with it.

This means that 99.6% of your customers are using $10 or less worth of bandwidth every month. How much are you charging these customers? $40? $50? That's a profit margin of a few hundred percent.

So let's say there are 100,000 subscribers in this region, assuming $40/mo subscription and all customers using 10GB/mo, the ISP is making $2.99 million dollars. Now, this leaves the 0.4% using >$10. With the bandwidth cost of $1/GB, they'd have to be using greater than 40GB/mo for the ISP to be losing money. Let's be unrealistic and assume they all use 1TB/mo. This means each of the 400 customers is costing the ISP $960/month, or $384,000 total. $3 million minus $400,000 is still a shitload of money.

So something here isn't right. Either a lot more people are "power users" than you're suggesting, or bandwidth is a lot more expensive than $1/mo.

It doesn't work like that. That's the wholesale price for the ISPs connection to the internet. It doesn't include all of the ISPs capital and operational expense of running and building their network. If you read the article this is mentioned.

I understand that, the point was the ISPs are screwing over a majority of the users, and only 0.4% are screwing over the ISPs. How can they not come out ahead in this scenario.

Also, most of the related costs would be relatively constant no matter how much bandwidth a person uses. Billing, for example, would be the same, as it's dependent on number of subscribers, not how much they use.