Earthlink Announces It Must Honor Comcast Cap 306
LostCluster writes "For those in Comcast territory, a popular way to get around Comcast's 250 GB monthly cap was to sign up for EarthLink Powered by Comcast Service, where there was no cap. Forget about that.... Earthlink just posted an FAQ explaining that Comcast will enforce the cap against Earthlink customers starting July 1."
Perspective (Score:5, Insightful)
To offer some perspective, here in the UK we have monthly limits that are most commonly in the 15-30Gb range, with a premium limit of 50Gb being offered by a minority of service providers.
Re:Perspective (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Net neutrality at its best (Score:5, Insightful)
Nah... this was brought to us by the lack of US Congress imposing regulation on the wire providers.
Re:Perspective (Score:5, Insightful)
FCC, do your damn job. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Perspective (Score:4, Insightful)
In Further Perspective (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Perspective (Score:5, Insightful)
2gb/mo wouldn't even handle my email these days with all the uncontrolled spam, let alone being bombarded by all the advertisements on almost every web page in existence.. If the limit here was that low i wouldn't even bother getting service.
Re:Couldn't they at least provide a meter? (Score:3, Insightful)
grkellm [freshmeat.net] comes with a bandwidth meter.
Re:So? (Score:5, Insightful)
In a related development... (Score:5, Insightful)
MSDN today sent me an e-mail asking if they can stop sending me DVD shipments because it's all available online. Sorry, not while I'm subject to this. :)
Re:So? (Score:5, Insightful)
Today, it's the 250 giggers. Tomorrow, 200. They will ALWAYS try to reduce the impact of the most prolific users. If they manage to get 99.9% of their customers under 250 gigs, they'll drop the limit to 200 gigs. Then 150. Then 100.
Meanwhile, maybe you start streaming HD movies from Netflix and watch your favorite TV shows on Hulu instead of paying $15/month for your DVR. Your 15-22 gigs a month starts going up. Eventually, your increased usage will meet their decreased level of acceptable use. Next thing you know, we'll be like Australia or England.
Just Get Business (Score:5, Insightful)
After discovering a local ISP wasn't able to service my apartment appropriately, I ended up getting Comcast Business class. You get a lot for a pittance of additional cost (~$20 / month more than residential around here).
One thing that's very different is the support. The support is phenomenally better. You call the phone number, and in seconds a knowledgeable person who is able to speak English well will get on the line (never had to be transferred to someone useful) 24/7. Other than better support, I get two static IP's with the package, and I believe that the business service has no monthly cap. Additionally, and unlike the residential service (where your monthly bill can get jacked up for no good reason) the rates I pay are contractually locked.
So (at least in my area) if you get residential, you're pretty much a sucker.
Re:Further perspective (Score:3, Insightful)
Further further perspective... T1 is slow! They only run at ~1.4 Mbit/s.
Re:do what you will. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Perspective (Score:5, Insightful)
You must live alone. That's OK; it's Slashdot. At least you're out of Mom's basement.
At my house, folks watch movies. The boy might be watching something on Netflix in HD, my brother in law might be watching something on tvshack.com, while my daughter is digging on something on Hulu, my wife is downloading a WoW update, and I'm pulling down a few torrents.
Every day.
250GB/mo ain't gonna cut it.
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Just Cough Up Another $40 (Score:3, Insightful)
Which is complete BS. He shouldn't have to buy business class access to receive what they advertise.
If I buy ad space on a website and the ad directs people to a website that tells them they can loose an unlimited amount of weight in 1 month the FTC would be all over me, but for some reason it's okay for ISPs to say you have unlimited bandwidth. You can say "oh the fine print they sign says so". Well the FTC recently cracked down on all the diet rebills that were going crazy and are now prosecuting people. They told people about the price just like ISPs do, in fine print. While I'm happy the FTC is cracking down on those people they should also attack the ISPs that fraudulently sell unlimited internet access.
Re:Perspective (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Perspective (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Perspective (Score:5, Insightful)
To ensure it is all put in perspective and fit to reality. Downloads limits have absolutely nothing to ensure people can access the bandwidth they are paying for. It is just one huge lie in order to drive up prices via collusion between the major ISPs, the incumbent telecoms.
For once and for all, bandwidth caps will have zero impact on the peak load times. Those peak load times are purely driven by people attempting to access chronically over sold bandwidth at the same time and have absolutely nothing to do with the total downloads over a month. Point of fact peak down loaders will download by far the bulk of their data in off peak times, simple logical common sense.
The reason you internet connection turns to crap when you get home and try to use it, is because everybody else is trying to use it at the same time, total downloads over a month hand nothing to do with traffic congestion at peak times. Putting data limits in has much more to do with competitively crippling digital sales distribution companies. Want to sell your own music direct to your customers, well you not going to do it with out paying an ISP tax at anywhere between 20 and 100 percent ie either sell through the telecom and pay them or go out of business (it doesn't matter whether you get your customers to off peak or even try to torrent, the incumbents will kill your business by screwing over potential customers).
Truth in bandwidth sales should be forced upon the ISP's, if you advertise bandwidth that is what you should be capable of providing at peak times and should not be based on maximum potential localised bandwidth no matter how it is crippled by the reality at regional, national and international levels.
Local Munis (Score:1, Insightful)
No, it was brought to us by every local municipality granting monopoly contracts in exchange for kickbacks from the monthly service charges.
Or have you never wondered why you'd be lucky to have a choice between even two providers?
The feds did help out though - by throwing billions in tax breaks and other grants at ISPs with little to no oversight in how it was used.
Re:I transfer 200gb a week... (Score:2, Insightful)
To add some perspective, here in the US I transfer ~200gb a week, and since April 28th just one of the three always-on PCs transferred a upload/download combined 602gb. That's the media server, which transcodes video delivered from Hulu and Netflix through PlayON so it's viewable on the TV through a XBMC. I cancelled my TV service nearly 3 years ago and have been relying on downloaded and streaming media ever since.
So you're effectively using Hulu to create your own personal TV service, sucking up packet bandwith for content that the cable provider offers by multicast. This strikes me as one of the major "abuses" that Comcast is trying to discourage by capping usage. 200 GB is about 30 full length, HD movies. Assuming you don't actually watch 60 hours of TV-over-internet each week, your media server is downloading, transcoding, and discarding a lot of stuff.
It's not your responsibility to see that the cable company makes money off you. You have every right to get as much value as you can within the terms of your service contract, and if that contract lets you consume 2.5 TB/month of traffic, then good for you. Your neighbors may hate you for consuming 95% of the neighborhood bandwidth, but good for you, anyway. Likewise, you shouldn't be surprised if the provider recognizes that they're losing money and changes the terms of the contract so they can stay in business. If the terms Comcast is making Earthlink enforce are really onerous to people, they'll find another provider and Comcast will go back to losing money and will revise their ToS again, in hopes of maximizing their profit.
Re:Perspective (Score:3, Insightful)
The boy might be watching something on Netflix in HD
Ok, say 1 GB
my brother in law might be watching something on tvshack.com
That will only be 250 MB
while my daughter is digging on something on Hulu
Also only 250 MB
my wife is downloading a WoW update
100 MB
and I'm pulling down a few torrents
Unspecified, but how many games can you "test" each day? How many movies do you need?
But I will give you 2 GB daily average on torrenting until MPAA comes busting your ass.
That adds up to 3.5 GB daily. Or 100 GB monthly.
250GB/mo ain't gonna cut it.
Yes it will.
In my experience the only way to reach such high usage levels is by seeding torrents 24/7, and then you will reach it on your upload - not download.
Re:Perspective (Score:1, Insightful)
So you, alone, claim you used 1.2 GB in a day.
That means there would have to be seven of you all sharing a single connection before you hit 250 GB in a month. Seven people is an extraordinarily large household.
Nope, I think 250 GB is just fine for today's internet, thank you very much.
Additional proof that this really isn't a problem: no normal person doing normal things has ever been cut off for exceeding 250 GB in a month. The only people who have ever run into this limit are serial copyright thieves. That's it. Fact. Sorry if it doesn't tally with your "I should be entitled to everything I want" worldview, but there it is.
Re:Perspective (Score:2, Insightful)
A Cable broadband provider imposing bandwidth caps to 'alleviate congestion' is like the DOT trying to fix traffic jams on roads, by lowering speed limits or raising gas prices.
Yes... as if raising gas prices 50% or capping how much gas you can buy, will reduce congestion during morning rush hour.