So let me get this straight. Your example of how a "legitimate", nonpirate can generate massive bandwidth... is you, er, pirating British TV? Plus doing games & streaming...
50 HD movies a month = 150 GB. You want to use AT&T's Internet service as a continuous Media streaming service, something that does not work as a business model for them if even 1/4 of their users were to do what you do. Why should 95% of the users subsidize your hogging all the bandwidth?
No where did I list my pirating of British television fall under my legitimate reason. It clearly is separated in my statement.
I'm just saying that while what I do techinchally is pirating in that small since, there is sooooo freaking much more I do use services for that doesn't. Not that it matters I use cox anyway.
This is just AT&T trying to capitalize I feel, preemptively, of the growing trend to do EVERYTHING online. Downloading games, music, movies, books anything, we're going to see pretty much any form of media turn into a steam/itunes/netflix type service and they are SOOOOOOOOO getting ready for it so they can create what plans they want.
So let me get this straight. Your example of how a "legitimate", nonpirate can generate massive bandwidth... is you, er, pirating British TV? Plus doing games & streaming...
50 HD movies a month = 150 GB. You want to use AT&T's Internet service as a continuous Media streaming service, something that does not work as a business model for them if even 1/4 of their users were to do what you do. Why should 95% of the users subsidize your hogging all the bandwidth?
The internet has and continues to become, extremely bandwidth intensive. It's not just watching stuff on Netflix or torrenting *insert media here*. It's when you combine other programs like Steam, online gaming, other sites like Youtube, uploading pictures, and so on. When you're using programs that constantly use bandwidth even when they're in the background, they quickly add up too. It's easy to just look at one thing and go "See, you're not using that much bandwidth so you don't have to worry about it!", but you need to look at things in context. You're not going to use the internet just for Netflix, at least for an average internet user.
I shouldn't have to be punished because some guy out there has gigabytes of torrents running on his computer all day long, and I had nothing to do with it.
I was surprised to learn that in many countries outside the U.S., bandwidth is often capped. Seriously? How lame is that?
Fortunately, AT&T is the first one I've heard of proposing this, and hopefully they will be the last. It all depends on how much competition is out there, we'll see.
I know if I had AT&T, I would bolt right away. Not that I necessarily use 150 in a month, but I sure wouldn't want to get cut off or pay overages. Will stick with flat prices unlimited, thanks!
Yikes. Are the caps universal or are there holdouts that offer non-capped?
Pretty much universal. Bell, Shaw, and to a lesser extent Telus and friends are pretty samey when you get right down to it. I know it's possible to get uncapped, but it's really expensive and not worth it.
Pretty much universal. Bell, Shaw, and to a lesser extent Telus and friends are pretty samey when you get right down to it. I know it's possible to get uncapped, but it's really expensive and not worth it.
So what kind of cap is typical in Canada, 150?
Do you ever go over that?
I don't think I would go over 150 in a month, but I would rather not find out. Last month, I got a week off just to veg... spent half of my time watching TV shows on Netflix. I probably went over that number that time.
"Restriction breeds creativity." - Sheldon Menery on EDH / Commander in Magic: The Gathering
"Cancel Culture is the real reason why everyone's not allowed to have nice things anymore." - Anonymous
"For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?" - Mark 8:36
"Most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution." - Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
"Every life decision is always a risk / reward proposition." - Sanjay Gupta
I'm pretty sure my cap is 100. That's combined up+down. ~3 gigs a day, basically. Not the easiest cap to break but I've managed it before without specifically trying.
Let them cap it. Let all of them cap it. Then it will open up new business for those who don't cap it.
This is not how internet works in the US. Because the people who own the infrastructure that brings the data to your home have a monopoly on those lines, there's no one to compete with them. In many countries, a company which owns the physical infrastructure has to sell access to other companies which can then compete on pricing and access and what-not. This is not the case in the US. If the companies which run phone lines and cable lines into your house decide to cap your bandwidth, you won't have any alternatives.
Yikes. Are the caps universal or are there holdouts that offer non-capped?
Over here, at least, unlimited plans have begun surfacing just within the last few months. But prices have been driven down and caps up by loads of competition of late.
This is not how internet works in the US. Because the people who own the infrastructure that brings the data to your home have a monopoly on those lines, there's no one to compete with them. In many countries, a company which owns the physical infrastructure has to sell access to other companies which can then compete on pricing and access and what-not. This is not the case in the US. If the companies which run phone lines and cable lines into your house decide to cap your bandwidth, you won't have any alternatives.
Oh wow, my turn to learn something. Perhaps foolish of me, but I had assumed that either the actual infrastructure was government-owned or that the owner was forced by law to lease access to other companies basically the world over. If what you say is accurate, I'm surprised such an anticompetitive model has survived unchecked by legislation.
Oh wow, my turn to learn something. Perhaps foolish of me, but I had assumed that either the actual infrastructure was government-owned or that the owner was forced by law to lease access to other companies basically the world over. If what you say is accurate, I'm surprised such an anticompetitive model has survived unchecked by legislation.
I dunno, it sure sounds uncompetitive but in practice they are delivering big time.
I love my ISP, the net is blazing fast for $20 USD a month, with no cap whatsoever. Or I could go with the phone company's internet instead, about the same price but not quite as fast.
When I was on satellite I think my cap was 5gb or 10gb per month (not shut of, just throttled down). So I'm actually OK with 150. There isn't much we can do about it besides switching ISPs, but I can only assume that they will follow suit after a while. I'm not saying I agree with it, because it's a blatant money grab "oh, if you get uverse, our new awesome service you get a 250 cap". They aren't fooling anyone (not me at least).
I use the internet all day, I wonder how much I actually use. I hope it's not 150+ or I'm going to be fat pissed. They could at least give us free bandwidth monitor and/or keep us apprised of how much we are using (they might already, I don't know my wife pays the bills).
Oh wow, my turn to learn something. Perhaps foolish of me, but I had assumed that either the actual infrastructure was government-owned or that the owner was forced by law to lease access to other companies basically the world over. If what you say is accurate, I'm surprised such an anticompetitive model has survived unchecked by legislation.
Telco's are required by law to lease lines. i am not sure about cable companies. some cable companies do. I know that time warner leases their lines to other people etc.
I have att uverse and i think the cap on that is like 200 gigs.
i actually like their TV service it is pretty good and better priced than brighthouse.
days of unlimited internet is over. i think they should just put throttles on people using to much bandwidth instead of capping them, but they make more money on the cap.
which is fine i don't do a lot of movie watching on my computer that is why i have a TV. my gaming habits have been slacking off until at least diablo 3 comes out then it might pick back up again.
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Yikes. Are the caps universal or are there holdouts that offer non-capped?
There are some small ISP's that get the bandwidth from Bell that try to offer unlimited. With the recent changes though, Bell is allowed to charge them higher prices as well, making that business model unfeasible if the change doesn't get overturned.
I don't think I would go over 150 in a month, but I would rather not find out. Last month, I got a week off just to veg... spent half of my time watching TV shows on Netflix. I probably went over that number that time.
The difference between the Canadian and American UBB proposals lie in the extreme disparity in cap size and overage charges. AT&T’s 150GB caps and $0.50/GB overage charges compare to Bell’s 25GB caps, with overage charges ranging anywhere from $1/GB to $5/GB.
And this is why I made my initial comment about a 150 GB cap being luxury. Luckily, I am on an unlimited plan or I would be screwed.
So any Americans who are upset by AT&T’s announcement should remember things could be worse.
overage charges ranging anywhere from $1/GB to $5/GB.
Someone actually crunched the numbers on that one and found that if you buy a brand new solid state drive, fill it to capacity, physically mail it to someone using expensive overnight shipping, and then throw the damn thing out when you're done copying the data off it, it's still cheaper per gigabyte (and about the same overall transfer speed) than the Internet.
I dunno, it sure sounds uncompetitive but in practice they are delivering big time.
I love my ISP, the net is blazing fast for $20 USD a month, with no cap whatsoever. Or I could go with the phone company's internet instead, about the same price but not quite as fast.
Nope, your internet is blazingly slow copmared to the rest of the world:
By average America gets 3.9 MB/S, and for the average consumer, the max I've seen is 5. I very much doubt you got the max speed. I'm running on 1 mb/s. Laughably slow compared to South Korea's internet speed.
The source also shows that we are very slow at changing speed in America.
I don't think we deserve to be paying by the MB until we get faster internet here. I hate the idea of a cap unless it's something like 150 GB per computer or something, because my family will blow through that in 2 weeks.
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By average America gets 3.9 MB/S, and for the average consumer, the max I've seen is 5. I very much doubt you got the max speed.
There are many fast internet options in the cities. I'm in the Los Angeles metropolitan area and everywhere I've been had at least one package with speeds of 15 MB/s or greater. Most cities offer internet connections considerably faster.
It's simply that most internet users choose to pay for the slowest plan and not that the United States lacks the infrastructure for faster speed.
P.S. Also, I'm an average consumer currently on Time Warner with speeds of ~28 mbps.
Telco's are required by law to lease lines. i am not sure about cable companies. some cable companies do. I know that time warner leases their lines to other people etc.
Right, this is the difference. Telephone lines are a "telecommunications service" and therefore have the regulations that require them to lease access. Broadband internet is an "information service", and so doesn't have that same requirement. This was an FCC decision, back in 2002.
I get 9 mbps....that's at night, when it's busier. During the day I can get up to 11 mbps. So, I don't know what you're talking about. Maybe in Nebraska it's like that... *shrug*
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No where did I list my pirating of British television fall under my legitimate reason. It clearly is separated in my statement.
I'm just saying that while what I do techinchally is pirating in that small since, there is sooooo freaking much more I do use services for that doesn't. Not that it matters I use cox anyway.
This is just AT&T trying to capitalize I feel, preemptively, of the growing trend to do EVERYTHING online. Downloading games, music, movies, books anything, we're going to see pretty much any form of media turn into a steam/itunes/netflix type service and they are SOOOOOOOOO getting ready for it so they can create what plans they want.
The internet has and continues to become, extremely bandwidth intensive. It's not just watching stuff on Netflix or torrenting *insert media here*. It's when you combine other programs like Steam, online gaming, other sites like Youtube, uploading pictures, and so on. When you're using programs that constantly use bandwidth even when they're in the background, they quickly add up too. It's easy to just look at one thing and go "See, you're not using that much bandwidth so you don't have to worry about it!", but you need to look at things in context. You're not going to use the internet just for Netflix, at least for an average internet user.
I shouldn't have to be punished because some guy out there has gigabytes of torrents running on his computer all day long, and I had nothing to do with it.
Fortunately, AT&T is the first one I've heard of proposing this, and hopefully they will be the last. It all depends on how much competition is out there, we'll see.
I know if I had AT&T, I would bolt right away. Not that I necessarily use 150 in a month, but I sure wouldn't want to get cut off or pay overages. Will stick with flat prices unlimited, thanks!
It's what you get when, as with Canada, the Internet market is an oligopoly.
Yikes. Are the caps universal or are there holdouts that offer non-capped?
Pretty much universal. Bell, Shaw, and to a lesser extent Telus and friends are pretty samey when you get right down to it. I know it's possible to get uncapped, but it's really expensive and not worth it.
So what kind of cap is typical in Canada, 150?
Do you ever go over that?
I don't think I would go over 150 in a month, but I would rather not find out. Last month, I got a week off just to veg... spent half of my time watching TV shows on Netflix. I probably went over that number that time.
"Restriction breeds creativity." - Sheldon Menery on EDH / Commander in Magic: The Gathering
"Cancel Culture is the real reason why everyone's not allowed to have nice things anymore." - Anonymous
"For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?" - Mark 8:36
"Most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution." - Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
"Every life decision is always a risk / reward proposition." - Sanjay Gupta
I'm pretty sure my cap is 100. That's combined up+down. ~3 gigs a day, basically. Not the easiest cap to break but I've managed it before without specifically trying.
This is not how internet works in the US. Because the people who own the infrastructure that brings the data to your home have a monopoly on those lines, there's no one to compete with them. In many countries, a company which owns the physical infrastructure has to sell access to other companies which can then compete on pricing and access and what-not. This is not the case in the US. If the companies which run phone lines and cable lines into your house decide to cap your bandwidth, you won't have any alternatives.
Over here, at least, unlimited plans have begun surfacing just within the last few months. But prices have been driven down and caps up by loads of competition of late.
Oh wow, my turn to learn something. Perhaps foolish of me, but I had assumed that either the actual infrastructure was government-owned or that the owner was forced by law to lease access to other companies basically the world over. If what you say is accurate, I'm surprised such an anticompetitive model has survived unchecked by legislation.
I dunno, it sure sounds uncompetitive but in practice they are delivering big time.
I love my ISP, the net is blazing fast for $20 USD a month, with no cap whatsoever. Or I could go with the phone company's internet instead, about the same price but not quite as fast.
I use the internet all day, I wonder how much I actually use. I hope it's not 150+ or I'm going to be fat pissed. They could at least give us free bandwidth monitor and/or keep us apprised of how much we are using (they might already, I don't know my wife pays the bills).
Telco's are required by law to lease lines. i am not sure about cable companies. some cable companies do. I know that time warner leases their lines to other people etc.
I have att uverse and i think the cap on that is like 200 gigs.
i actually like their TV service it is pretty good and better priced than brighthouse.
days of unlimited internet is over. i think they should just put throttles on people using to much bandwidth instead of capping them, but they make more money on the cap.
which is fine i don't do a lot of movie watching on my computer that is why i have a TV. my gaming habits have been slacking off until at least diablo 3 comes out then it might pick back up again.
Thanks to Epic Graphics the best around.
Thanks to Nex3 for the avatar visit ye old sig and avatar forum
There are some small ISP's that get the bandwidth from Bell that try to offer unlimited. With the recent changes though, Bell is allowed to charge them higher prices as well, making that business model unfeasible if the change doesn't get overturned.
Haha.
Have a read: http://business.financialpost.com/2011/03/14/usage-based-internet-billing-coming-to-the-united-states/
And this is why I made my initial comment about a 150 GB cap being luxury. Luckily, I am on an unlimited plan or I would be screwed.
Someone actually crunched the numbers on that one and found that if you buy a brand new solid state drive, fill it to capacity, physically mail it to someone using expensive overnight shipping, and then throw the damn thing out when you're done copying the data off it, it's still cheaper per gigabyte (and about the same overall transfer speed) than the Internet.
Nope, your internet is blazingly slow copmared to the rest of the world:
http://www.webanalyticsworld.net/2010/01/fastest-internet-speeds-by-country.html
By average America gets 3.9 MB/S, and for the average consumer, the max I've seen is 5. I very much doubt you got the max speed. I'm running on 1 mb/s. Laughably slow compared to South Korea's internet speed.
The source also shows that we are very slow at changing speed in America.
I don't think we deserve to be paying by the MB until we get faster internet here. I hate the idea of a cap unless it's something like 150 GB per computer or something, because my family will blow through that in 2 weeks.
"I've always been a fan of reality by popular vote" - Stephen Colbert (in response to Don McLeroy)
GPolukranos, Kill ALL the Things!G
It's simply that most internet users choose to pay for the slowest plan and not that the United States lacks the infrastructure for faster speed.
P.S. Also, I'm an average consumer currently on Time Warner with speeds of ~28 mbps.
Right, this is the difference. Telephone lines are a "telecommunications service" and therefore have the regulations that require them to lease access. Broadband internet is an "information service", and so doesn't have that same requirement. This was an FCC decision, back in 2002.
I get 9 mbps....that's at night, when it's busier. During the day I can get up to 11 mbps. So, I don't know what you're talking about. Maybe in Nebraska it's like that... *shrug*