Wolfbeckett
06-03-2008, 02:23 PM
Associated Press (http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jwm8wu3jZWZLcKfIlycqFqFegknwD9126HN8A)
So it looks like capped bandwidth is being seriously considered by internet providers. I personally consider this outrageous. Some excerpts from the article in italics followed by my commentary:
You're used to paying extra if you use up your cell phone minutes, but will you be willing to pay extra if your home computer goes over its Internet allowance?
Starting with the very first sentence. Cell phone companies are actually moving away from that billing structure. Their customers do not like it. More and more cell phone plans are offering more and more "unlimited minutes" options for precisely that reason.
Just 5 percent of the company's subscribers take up half of the capacity on local cable lines, Leddy said. Other cable Internet service providers report a similar distribution.
How is that the fault of those 5% of users? Should we all be punished because Time Warner can't provide the bandwidth they promised? If they promise their customers, for example, 2 Mbps download, and then cannot provide that speed to all of those customers at once, is that not their fault for selling a service they cannot provide?
Time Warner Cable had said in January that it was planning to conduct the trial in Beaumont, but did not give any details. On Monday, Leddy said its tiers will range from $29.95 a month for relatively slow service at 768 kilobits per second and a 5-gigabyte monthly cap to $54.90 per month for fast downloads at 15 megabits per second and a 40-gigabyte cap. Those prices cover the Internet portion of subscription bundles that include video or phone services. Both downloads and uploads will count toward the monthly cap.
Their numbers are just beyond belief. $30 per month for less than 1 Mbps and only 5 gigs of combined download and upload? Oops, hope you guys don't enjoy being able to play your PS3 and Xbox360 games online, because those devices access the internet and use up your bandwidth. You better really pray you don't get any spyware on your computer that turns it into a spambot or DOS zombie, because those will put you over the limit within a day or two, resulting in huge overcap bills. Don't know what that means or how to prevent? Tough, I can almost guarantee their is a clause in their TOS that says you are responsible for the data coming out of your computer, no matter what. The highest amount of bandwidth you can pay for in one month is 40 gigs? Don't make me laugh, if I go on a major Youtube bender I could probably use several gigs of that in just a few hours, and if I want to stream a movie through Netflix, whom I have a subscription with, well damn, that's 5 gigs or so of my monthly usage right there. At these prices, it costs MORE to stream a movie through Netflix then it costs to go to Blockbuster and rent it, even accounting for gas costs. This doesn't even begin to cover my actual internet usage, for example, downloading anime fansubs (for shows unlicensed iin this country, don't judge me!) which probably uses up 15-20 gigs of bandwidth per month easily.
If anyone else has any comments I'd love to hear them. This is a big deal to me as a consumer, especially because I do not have a choice. Where I live, I have 1 cable internet provider available to me, Cox Cable. There is no DSL in my area. If Cox goes this route I will have 3 choices:
1.) Bend over and take it like a prison *****
2.) Get dial-up and pretend I'm a caveman
3.) Cancel my internet and move to the middle of the forest where I can live in a log cabin and eat grass
Needless to say I don't like any of these 3 choices. Don't we have anti-monopoly laws to prevent these very attempts to screw the consumer? Oops, I forgot that these days the government is basically cuddle-buddies with big businesses, my bad.
So it looks like capped bandwidth is being seriously considered by internet providers. I personally consider this outrageous. Some excerpts from the article in italics followed by my commentary:
You're used to paying extra if you use up your cell phone minutes, but will you be willing to pay extra if your home computer goes over its Internet allowance?
Starting with the very first sentence. Cell phone companies are actually moving away from that billing structure. Their customers do not like it. More and more cell phone plans are offering more and more "unlimited minutes" options for precisely that reason.
Just 5 percent of the company's subscribers take up half of the capacity on local cable lines, Leddy said. Other cable Internet service providers report a similar distribution.
How is that the fault of those 5% of users? Should we all be punished because Time Warner can't provide the bandwidth they promised? If they promise their customers, for example, 2 Mbps download, and then cannot provide that speed to all of those customers at once, is that not their fault for selling a service they cannot provide?
Time Warner Cable had said in January that it was planning to conduct the trial in Beaumont, but did not give any details. On Monday, Leddy said its tiers will range from $29.95 a month for relatively slow service at 768 kilobits per second and a 5-gigabyte monthly cap to $54.90 per month for fast downloads at 15 megabits per second and a 40-gigabyte cap. Those prices cover the Internet portion of subscription bundles that include video or phone services. Both downloads and uploads will count toward the monthly cap.
Their numbers are just beyond belief. $30 per month for less than 1 Mbps and only 5 gigs of combined download and upload? Oops, hope you guys don't enjoy being able to play your PS3 and Xbox360 games online, because those devices access the internet and use up your bandwidth. You better really pray you don't get any spyware on your computer that turns it into a spambot or DOS zombie, because those will put you over the limit within a day or two, resulting in huge overcap bills. Don't know what that means or how to prevent? Tough, I can almost guarantee their is a clause in their TOS that says you are responsible for the data coming out of your computer, no matter what. The highest amount of bandwidth you can pay for in one month is 40 gigs? Don't make me laugh, if I go on a major Youtube bender I could probably use several gigs of that in just a few hours, and if I want to stream a movie through Netflix, whom I have a subscription with, well damn, that's 5 gigs or so of my monthly usage right there. At these prices, it costs MORE to stream a movie through Netflix then it costs to go to Blockbuster and rent it, even accounting for gas costs. This doesn't even begin to cover my actual internet usage, for example, downloading anime fansubs (for shows unlicensed iin this country, don't judge me!) which probably uses up 15-20 gigs of bandwidth per month easily.
If anyone else has any comments I'd love to hear them. This is a big deal to me as a consumer, especially because I do not have a choice. Where I live, I have 1 cable internet provider available to me, Cox Cable. There is no DSL in my area. If Cox goes this route I will have 3 choices:
1.) Bend over and take it like a prison *****
2.) Get dial-up and pretend I'm a caveman
3.) Cancel my internet and move to the middle of the forest where I can live in a log cabin and eat grass
Needless to say I don't like any of these 3 choices. Don't we have anti-monopoly laws to prevent these very attempts to screw the consumer? Oops, I forgot that these days the government is basically cuddle-buddies with big businesses, my bad.
