Time Warner bandwidth caps arrive (updated)

[ElFenix]

Originally posted by: vi edit
*****side tangent******

How much reserved space does the operating system and various other system stuff take up on the 360 20 gig drives? At 17 gig + patches, you are at the very edge of space for pretty much every "Premium" version of the console out there. You essentially could have no other downloaded content or local music stored on the machine. You get one game. That's it.

*****side tangent over******

considering the 360 can work without a hard drive, i don't' think the OS necessarily takes up any space on the disk.

 

[ElFenix]

Originally posted by: spidey07

Originally posted by: eos

me - "I like milk A LOT, but 10 gallons a week just isn't enough for me and my store won't sell me anymore. They say no one can possibly drink more than 2 gallons a week"

spidey - "Buy 100 cows and start a dairy farm. Duh..."

:roll:

I don't think you read the article. TWC is simply charging you when you go over your total 40 GB usage. Nobody is preventing anything here just making people pay if they are a huge bandwidth power user.

Appropriate analogy would be you pay the milkman 50 bucks for 5 gallons of milk per week. But you want 10, so the milkman will have to charge you for the extra milk.

Then I would say if you don't like the price, THEN go get your cows and make your own milk.

uh, that post was in response to you suggesting that someone call up the telco and have them run a T3 line because the phones were so old dial up wouldn't work. so yeah, the analogy was appropriate.

 

[Eos]

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.

Since .4% was shot down and 5-10% was offered in it's place, I have a followup:

Please explain how your ISP is having such problems if 90% of your paying customers are not using hardly any bandwidth? Their lack of usage combined should more than satisfy those other 10% of your users. Something isn't adding up right here at all.

100 customers -

10 use 5gb of upload per day and 20gb download per day; maxed out 24/7 cause they are pirates and that's the only reason for using a connection 24/7.
That's 1500gb downloaded and 6000gb uploaded per month for all 10 users.

The top 10 users are consuming 7500gb (lets say 90% of the total available bandwidth) and leave 750gb (the reamiaing 10% of bandwidth) for 90 others. That leaves 284mb per day for each of the 90 others. Or 8gb per month per user. Hmmm.

I still don't see how that's a problem if the real issue is "Other peoples' experience on the web is being ruined" by some using more than the rest.

This bullshit argument they insist on spewing will never hold any merit.

 

[Eos]

Originally posted by: Brovane

Originally posted by: Anubis

Originally posted by: Brovane
Has anybody actually measured how much they D/L over a month?

yes many people i suggest reading the thread

The people that seem to post accurate numbers on the thread have monthly usage far below 50GB. The rest of the people throw out wild numbers like 100GB+ I don't think they have ever sat down and actually tracked there monthly usage. I see a lot of guess work and little hard numbers.

I have doubled my average monthly download use every year since I started keeping track in 2004. 16gb per month, 48gb, 95gb, 236gb and this year so far 429gb. It's all in my preferred use. Unbox rentals, newsgroups, Apple trailers in HD, a 3 dvd 10gb Rush concert video (great quality for an AUD, btw), lots of tv shows in hd (ever see the BBC series, "How We Built Britain"?; wow! 10gb of HD splendor), occasional updates.

I'm a heavy user and really try to limit the bulk of my downloads to nighttime when my retiree neighbors sleep. Anything after 7pm, then...

 

[Eos]

Originally posted by: spidey07

Originally posted by: eos

me - "I like milk A LOT, but 10 gallons a week just isn't enough for me and my store won't sell me anymore. They say no one can possibly drink more than 2 gallons a week"

spidey - "Buy 100 cows and start a dairy farm. Duh..."

:roll:

I don't think you read the article. TWC is simply charging you when you go over your total 40 GB usage. Nobody is preventing anything here just making people pay if they are a huge bandwidth power user.

Appropriate analogy would be you pay the milkman 50 bucks for 5 gallons of milk per week. But you want 10, so the milkman will have to charge you for the extra milk.

Then I would say if you don't like the price, THEN go get your cows and make your own milk.

I read the article, but the gist of the pro cap arguments in this thread has been relating to how much someone uses, not that they can still use it, but expect to pay for it.

If the arguments for caps were honest, then I would not reply with my analogy.

 

[frostedflakes]

Originally posted by: eos

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.

Since .4% was shot down and 5-10% was offered in it's place, I have a followup:

Please explain how your ISP is having such problems if 90% of your paying customers are not using hardly any bandwidth? Their lack of usage combined should more than satisfy those other 10% of your users. Something isn't adding up right here at all.

100 customers -

10 use 5gb of upload per day and 20gb download per day; maxed out 24/7 cause they are pirates and that's the only reason for using a connection 24/7.
That's 1500gb downloaded and 6000gb uploaded per month for all 10 users.

The top 10 users are consuming 7500gb (lets say 90% of the total available bandwidth) and leave 750gb (the reamiaing 10% of bandwidth) for 90 others. That leaves 284mb per day for each of the 90 others. Or 8gb per month per user. Hmmm.

I still don't see how that's a problem if the real issue is "Other peoples' experience on the web is being ruined" by some using more than the rest.

This bullshit argument they insist on spewing will never hold any merit.

This is always what I've wondered as well. Actually because of this, I'd tend to think the unlimited model would be more profitable than a tiered model like what TWC is proposing, assuming the ISPs trim the fat at the top and get rid of the users eating up hundreds of gigabytes each month.

Also, something to keep in mind is that a network is not very efficient at its maximum capacity. For example, max out your upload and watch how much it hurts your ping and download speeds. I don't know the exact numbers, but to achieve best performance the ISPs probably need to keep the network usage less than 75% of its maximum capacity.

 

[Eos]

I wouldn't suppose that there is no available bandwidth at all. I just threw some numbers together and used all 100% of the bandwidth as an example. You could cut the usage back by 25% and still have lots available for the other 90%.

 

[vi edit]

Originally posted by: eos

I still don't see how that's a problem if the real issue is "Other peoples' experience on the web is being ruined" by some using more than the rest.

This bullshit argument they insist on spewing will never hold any merit.

I never considered this as a proactive approach to providing better service to "lite" users. It's simply a money saving tactic. Cable companies are buying their internet service from somebody bigger them then and piping it down to end users.

Simply put, abusive users cost them a disproportionate amount of money than they are putting back into the community pot. They are paying for 1 cookie and walking away with 12.

It really is about money, and nothing else. And really can't blame them for wanting to fire a few customers.

 

[Eos]

Originally posted by: vi edit

Originally posted by: eos

I still don't see how that's a problem if the real issue is "Other peoples' experience on the web is being ruined" by some using more than the rest.

This bullshit argument they insist on spewing will never hold any merit.

I never considered this as a proactive approach to providing better service to "lite" users. It's simply a money saving tactic. Cable companies are buying their internet service from somebody bigger them then and piping it down to end users.

Simply put, abusive users cost them a disproportionate amount of money than they are putting back into the community pot. They are paying for 1 cookie and walking away with 12.

It really is about money, and nothing else. And really can't blame them for wanting to fire a few customers.

Then there should be no ambiguity. No mailers about heavy users or any other bullshit.

"Due to increasing costs for providing a reliable and enjoyable internet experience, we have implemented monthly bandwidth caps." - your friends at (insert cableco)

^ That flyer will never be mailed out.

 

[Eos]

Originally posted by: vi edit

Originally posted by: eos

I still don't see how that's a problem if the real issue is "Other peoples' experience on the web is being ruined" by some using more than the rest.

This bullshit argument they insist on spewing will never hold any merit.

I never considered this as a proactive approach to providing better service to "lite" users. It's simply a money saving tactic. Cable companies are buying their internet service from somebody bigger them then and piping it down to end users.

Simply put, abusive users cost them a disproportionate amount of money than they are putting back into the community pot. They are paying for 1 cookie and walking away with 12.

It really is about money, and nothing else. And really can't blame them for wanting to fire a few customers.

And with all due respect, your consideration is not what the issue is. Comcast whined about a small amount of users making the internet no fun for everyone else after they finally admitted to Sandvine usage.

The public reason and the internal memo surely do not have the same info.

 

[frostedflakes]

Originally posted by: vi edit

Originally posted by: eos

I still don't see how that's a problem if the real issue is "Other peoples' experience on the web is being ruined" by some using more than the rest.

This bullshit argument they insist on spewing will never hold any merit.

I never considered this as a proactive approach to providing better service to "lite" users. It's simply a money saving tactic. Cable companies are buying their internet service from somebody bigger them then and piping it down to end users.

Simply put, abusive users cost them a disproportionate amount of money than they are putting back into the community pot. They are paying for 1 cookie and walking away with 12.

It really is about money, and nothing else. And really can't blame them for wanting to fire a few customers.

But aren't the low-bandwidth users (who supposedly far outnumber the high-bandwidth users, at least according to the ISPs) putting a disproportionate amount of money back into the pot? I think that's all eos is trying to say. ISPs cry about the abusers, but they must be making a decent amount of money off the majority of users who hardly use the bandwidth available from their connection.

 

[vi edit]

Originally posted by: frostedflakes

Originally posted by: vi edit

Originally posted by: eos

I still don't see how that's a problem if the real issue is "Other peoples' experience on the web is being ruined" by some using more than the rest.

This bullshit argument they insist on spewing will never hold any merit.

I never considered this as a proactive approach to providing better service to "lite" users. It's simply a money saving tactic. Cable companies are buying their internet service from somebody bigger them then and piping it down to end users.

Simply put, abusive users cost them a disproportionate amount of money than they are putting back into the community pot. They are paying for 1 cookie and walking away with 12.

It really is about money, and nothing else. And really can't blame them for wanting to fire a few customers.

But aren't the low-bandwidth users (who supposedly far outnumber the high-bandwidth users, at least according to the ISPs) putting a disproportionate amount of money back into the pot? I think that's all eos is trying to say. ISPs cry about the abusers, but they must be making a decent amount of money off the majority of users who hardly use the bandwidth available from their connection.

My car insurance company will drop me after so many claims, wrecks or high risk traffic tickets because it's no longer cost effective to insure me. This is really no different.

 

[spidey07]

Originally posted by: frostedflakes

Originally posted by: vi edit

Originally posted by: eos

I still don't see how that's a problem if the real issue is "Other peoples' experience on the web is being ruined" by some using more than the rest.

This bullshit argument they insist on spewing will never hold any merit.

I never considered this as a proactive approach to providing better service to "lite" users. It's simply a money saving tactic. Cable companies are buying their internet service from somebody bigger them then and piping it down to end users.

Simply put, abusive users cost them a disproportionate amount of money than they are putting back into the community pot. They are paying for 1 cookie and walking away with 12.

It really is about money, and nothing else. And really can't blame them for wanting to fire a few customers.

But aren't the low-bandwidth users (who supposedly far outnumber the high-bandwidth users, at least according to the ISPs) putting a disproportionate amount of money back into the pot? I think that's all eos is trying to say. ISPs cry about the abusers, but they must be making a decent amount of money off the majority of users who hardly use the bandwidth available from their connection.

It's the majority of users and their consumption is how the entire network is built and the pricing models as well. They are paying a fair price for what they're using and represent the bulk of customers. Also look at the profit margins for ISPs. They certainly aren't rolling in profit or money, it's very competitive.

 

[scttgrd]

I'll say it again, it's not about the bandwidth as much as it is creating more revenue on existing services. And killing the competions web services to offer thier own. I don't think they would complain if you were only thier paid services.

 

[Foxery]

Originally posted by: eos
Please explain how your ISP is having such problems if 90% of your paying customers are not using hardly any bandwidth? Their lack of usage combined should more than satisfy those other 10% of your users. Something isn't adding up right here at all.

It's more a question of capacity for them. Without the abusers, the ISP would need drastically less capacity, and fiber optics ain't cheap.

Back in the days of dialup, most ISPs operated on the "1/8th rule": buy one modem for every 8 customers, because most of the time, only 1 in 8 people is online at any given time. Occasionally in the evening there will be busy signals; otherwise, this held pretty well. Abusers in this case were people who left their machines online all day because, quote, "my plan says unlimited!"

This rule translated directly into broadband: A fast connection loads most web pages 8X as quickly as a human can read it, (during which time the connection is idle/unused,) so they try to only have 1/8th of the theoretical maximum capacity. Same problem with abusers: We throw off the statistics and reach max capacity sooner and more often.


** Not defending one party or the other -- but a lot of folks here are missing the bigger picture of how the businesses operate.

 

[aldamon]

http://www.dslreports.com/show...hind-The-Numbers-95035

Excerpt:

That?s just over 75 minutes of SD Internet video every day - two or three shows at best - which means you might need to continue buying the ?video connection? in order to watch more television. Sure you can slice and dice the data transfers with other online activities, but this is all about video.

What better way to ensure that AppleTV doesn't eat your lunch down the road, while pleasing your investors. And pleased they should be, given the profits on the proposed caps, should they be deployed nationally, would be stunning. I think Dave Burstein probably put it best in an e-mail after I first broke the story last January:

There is nothing inherently wrong in charging for bandwidth, if the charge is reasonably proportional to the costs. Time Warner's numbers don't pass the smell test, however. The markup over cost on that bandwidth is between 1000% and 1500%. . . 40 gigabytes at seven cents is less than three dollars per month. Time Warner charges over $40. That's like Starbucks drastically raising the price if you put sugar in your coffee. Any large carrier with a cap below 100 gigabytes and a price above $30 is abusing market power. Their bandwidth costs are less than the marketing budget, and the customer is profitable.

The markup over cost on that bandwidth is between 1000% and 1500%

 

[Xavier434]

Originally posted by: aldamon
http://www.dslreports.com/show...hind-The-Numbers-95035

Excerpt:

That?s just over 75 minutes of SD Internet video every day - two or three shows at best - which means you might need to continue buying the ?video connection? in order to watch more television. Sure you can slice and dice the data transfers with other online activities, but this is all about video.

What better way to ensure that AppleTV doesn't eat your lunch down the road, while pleasing your investors. And pleased they should be, given the profits on the proposed caps, should they be deployed nationally, would be stunning. I think Dave Burstein probably put it best in an e-mail after I first broke the story last January:

There is nothing inherently wrong in charging for bandwidth, if the charge is reasonably proportional to the costs. Time Warner's numbers don't pass the smell test, however. The markup over cost on that bandwidth is between 1000% and 1500%. . . 40 gigabytes at seven cents is less than three dollars per month. Time Warner charges over $40. That's like Starbucks drastically raising the price if you put sugar in your coffee. Any large carrier with a cap below 100 gigabytes and a price above $30 is abusing market power. Their bandwidth costs are less than the marketing budget, and the customer is profitable.

The markup over cost on that bandwidth is between 1000% and 1500%

This is exactly what I was theorizing. I don't mind caps being placed. I just want them to be reasonable even to the customers who use a lot of bandwidth legally. TWC's caps are ridiculously small for what they are charging. If done correctly, the caps will be high enough so that even a user life myself will feel like I still have unlimited even though a cap exists. In addition, I except rollover bandwidth so that can act as a safety net for those months where I happen to use more bandwidth than usual.

 

[Viper GTS]

I have absolutely nothing against bandwidth caps to curb abuse, in fact I am all for them. The idiot who thinks he's entitled to move 1/2 a terabyte per month because he paid $50 for his service deserves to have his service cancelled.

That said...

40 GB per month is obscenely low. I am not a heavy downloader by any stretch of the imagination but 40 GB is too low.

Rather than moving to an outright cap they should do something like the satellite providers have done - A bucket that fills at a fixed rate. You can drain that bucket as fast as your speed tier will let you but when the bucket is empty you are limited to the fill rate. This gives all the benefits of a high-speed connection for normal use, allows for the download of large files in a timely fashion, but won't let you max out your connection 24/7 like some people want to do.

Higher speed tiers = faster drain rate + faster fill rate + bigger bucket.

Viper GTS

 

[torpid]

I really think all this bickering about 40gb is kind of moot. Pretend for a moment like 40gb is reasonable. Who the hell wants to pay $55/month just for their internet service? Not me. Basically, to even get a 40gb cap, you have to buy their most expensive internet service tier. Let's talk about the "normal" tier. That's got a 5gb limit. And it costs $30.

The big story here is that they are clearly intentionally making the 5gb cap low to force people onto a higher tier who do anything except casual browsing. This is effectively a major price increase with ZERO benefit to the customers who actually go under the cap.

 

[Q]

What's starting?

 

[ponyo]

It's not bandwidth issue. Time Warner and other cable companies are afraid of on-demand TV programming that is starting to available on the web. They see On-demand net programming as a major threat to their business model and something that could potentially threaten their existence. Why get and pay for cable TV programming when you can watch programming when you want whenever you want for free on the internet? This is what cable companies fear and they have the right to be scared. But this stupid bandwidth cap won't solve their problem. People will switch to other provider like phone companies and upcoming WiMax.

 

[legoman666]

Originally posted by: Viper GTS
I have absolutely nothing against bandwidth caps to curb abuse, in fact I am all for them. The idiot who thinks he's entitled to move 1/2 a terabyte per month because he paid $50 for his service deserves to have his service cancelled.

That said...

40 GB per month is obscenely low. I am not a heavy downloader by any stretch of the imagination but 40 GB is too low.

Rather than moving to an outright cap they should do something like the satellite providers have done - A bucket that fills at a fixed rate. You can drain that bucket as fast as your speed tier will let you but when the bucket is empty you are limited to the fill rate. This gives all the benefits of a high-speed connection for normal use, allows for the download of large files in a timely fashion, but won't let you max out your connection 24/7 like some people want to do.

Higher speed tiers = faster drain rate + faster fill rate + bigger bucket.

Viper GTS

The plan shouldn't say "unlimited" if it really isn't. I'd have no problems with them telling me I have a 200gb/mo limit. But as long as the fine print says "unlimited," I'll do as I damn well please.

That said, the bucket is a decent sounding idea.

 

[Muadib]

Originally posted by: legoman666

Originally posted by: Viper GTS
I have absolutely nothing against bandwidth caps to curb abuse, in fact I am all for them. The idiot who thinks he's entitled to move 1/2 a terabyte per month because he paid $50 for his service deserves to have his service cancelled.

That said...

40 GB per month is obscenely low. I am not a heavy downloader by any stretch of the imagination but 40 GB is too low.

Rather than moving to an outright cap they should do something like the satellite providers have done - A bucket that fills at a fixed rate. You can drain that bucket as fast as your speed tier will let you but when the bucket is empty you are limited to the fill rate. This gives all the benefits of a high-speed connection for normal use, allows for the download of large files in a timely fashion, but won't let you max out your connection 24/7 like some people want to do.

Higher speed tiers = faster drain rate + faster fill rate + bigger bucket.

Viper GTS

The plan shouldn't say "unlimited" if it really isn't. I'd have no problems with them telling me I have a 200gb/mo limit. But as long as the fine print says "unlimited," I'll do as I damn well please.

Exactly!!! It's false advertising, plain & simple. I have Comcast, and when I signed up, unlimited was plastered everywhere. They brought this sh$# on themselves!

 

[QueBert]

back in 95 I would stay connected to my "unlimited" dial up shell account for like 16 hours a day, my ISP called me and said I was abusing their "unlimited" service lol. I guess tying up one of their phone lines for 2/3rds a day every day was bad? And apparently I was confused as to the meaning of "unlimited"

I moved on to abusing Sprints "unlimited" 2G service some years later. I ended up getting a call saying I could either A. pay for all my bandwidth, or B. have my mobile internet cut off for good. I was something like 70 gigs in. This was over 6 months or so, the connection wasn't too fast maybe 15k/s but I tethered like a bitch every day. If I wanted to pay it off and keep it I would have had to paid them 1 cent per kilobyte. I chose B

I've learned "unlimited" is never "unlimited" except for maybe MetroPCS they claim you can talk "43,200" minutes in a 30 day month and only pay $35 bucks. Seems to be no fine print there, somebody with Metro should call somebody else with metro, both with the phones plugged in the charger and leave them connected for a straight month and see what happens lol.

 

[soonerproud]

Originally posted by: E equals MC2
I just realized 99% of the ppl who posted here have no idea WTF they're talking about yet they claim to spew BS out of their mouths.

How long did it take you to come to this epiphany?