Belgian ISP Claims One Customer Downloads 2.7TB 276
An anonymous reader writes with this envy-spawning excerpt: "While for most people the data limit is never reached, with media-rich websites becoming every more prevalent, and more media services going online (we're looking at you streaming video services), it won't be long before the average user is surpassing even the highest caps commonly imposed today. But how much data is it possible to download every month? And do the so-called data-hogs really burn through that much more data than everyone else? According to Belgian ISP Telenet, the answers are 'a lot' and 'yes, they can.'"
Re:Its possible (Score:3, Interesting)
What is the actual cost to the ISP? (Score:5, Interesting)
Based on what we are paying for Internet traffic, 2TB of traffic would very roughly cost about $50.
So since this is their one biggest user, and even he is probably paying more than $50 for his internet connection, I don't see the problem with bandwidth hogs.
Does this come as a surprise? (Score:3, Interesting)
Download limits get you no where these days and ISPs don't get this. 10GB limit on Telstra here in Australia (one of the first in the world) was fine in 1999. Dropping to 3GB crippled my fancy new broadband connection. We put up with Telstra's 10GB crap for years constantly hitting the limit and they called us a power user. Now here we are in 2010 I have a 150GB download limit, 110GB offpeak, and 40GB onpeak. We hit the 40GB onpeak limit every single month. This does not include any download, high def porn or any other such nonsense since we schedule that to run through the night. Yet even then we still do about 70GB offpeak per month.
I'm almost scared of what we will be doing in 2020. What a nail-biting election we're having today too. Tonight we find out if the future of Australia is to make the worlds dumbest monopolistic ISP (who still think 10GB is for power users now in 2010) even bigger, or if we're going to get FTTH setup by a political party.
Re:Does this come as a surprise? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:What is the actual cost to the ISP? (Score:1, Interesting)
It seems that you have no knowledge of the Belgian ISP climate, it has been the worst of Europe for the past decade. Once Telenet was one of the fastest providers in Europe surpassing broadband leaders such as Sweden and The Netherlands. When the revolution of Napster came up, many of the Napster root servers where hosted on Telenet machines basically almost toppling Telenet over in usage.
That is where the age of heavy data limits started, up to last year it was very common for Belgians to have a download cap of no more then 30GB a month. This new "Fair Use" plan has been introduced just a few months ago and you can see how some of the users are playing catch up.
So don't be envious of the Belgians at all, they might just have been pulled into the current age, but their broadband market is still heavily monopolized and overprized.
Countries as Sweden, Denmark, and The Netherlands have far better connection with no caps or limits what so ever, I bet many Swedish ISP can show 2.6TB logs 5 years ago.
And if you read the ORIGINAL story, they don't car (Score:3, Interesting)
The ISP doesn't CARE. This is old news and the data has been used by the ISP to show data limits are useless AND they dropped them therefor.
So the ISP isn't complaining, it is advertising. Both making its competitors seem like cheapo's AND showing that you can download what you want with them as well as showing that overall, the average consumer doesn't even come close. Because the difference between 1 and 2 is already huge but number 10 barely counts.
Why else do you think some of the users agreed to have their username printed on the list?
Re:What is the actual cost to the ISP? (Score:4, Interesting)
That's actually the reason the ISP posted the information - they want to convince their customers (and potential customers) on cheaper slower plans that not only is the ISP capable of handling massive bandwidth consumption, but that they encourage other people to upgrade/switch to the same unlimited plans and really take advantage of the available capacity.
Its totally the reverse of what we are used to in the USA with places like comcast bitching and moaning about hogs - apparently this ISP understands that bandwidth hogs are a business opportunity to be cultivated not capped.
Although according to their website [telenet.be] if you go over the double the average usage for people with a FUP subscription your connection is slowed. These guys are getting a free ride now because Telenet need the publicity. A couple of ISP's have switched from capped downloads to a FUP recently and I guess they are feeling the competition. Let's see how they treat these guys in a couple of months.
Re:Who cares? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Human nature (Score:2, Interesting)
Little history lesson about my own country(one north from Belgium):
Back when most of the cable infrastructure was put down, it was owned and operated by government(local ones).
Later on when "privatize! privatize!" was all the rage, this infrastructure was *sold* to the current cable companies, in quite a few cases in exchange for part or full ownership of the company, meaning that although it was ran as a business all the profits would still flow back to local government.
Right now we're seriously looking at breaking up the cable market to get more competition in but alas...once something is in the private sector that is a heck of lot harder to do. So either we(we being "the people") buy the stuff back or we find an alternative.
And...for the record, I can pick from, oh, 15 different ISP's or so. Currently running a 50/5 connection with no bandwidth cap except for a reasonable use policy which is actually reasonable. Unless I start downloading in the TB range for several months in a row...noone's gonna notice.