Time Warner Cable to Test Tiered Bandwidth Caps 591
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "According to a leaked internal memo, Time Warner Cable is testing out tiered bandwidth caps in their Beaumont, TX division as a way to fairly balance the needs of heavy users against the limited amount of shared bandwidth cable can provide. The plan is to offer various service tiers with bandwidth fees for overuse, as well as a bandwidth meter customers can use to help them stay within their allotment. If it works out, they will consider a nation-wide rollout. Interestingly, the memo also claims that 5% of subscribers use over 50% of the total network bandwidth."
A new approach to limiting usage is needed (Score:5, Insightful)
I think that ISPs need to take a different approach other than imposing hard caps on the users, even if you can choose your cap with varying amounts of cash.
First, the users that occaisonally download large files should be treated differnetly than those that leave their p2p clients/home webserver/internet radio on all the time. For example, I often need to download isos for linux livecds or install disks. If my average daily usage is low, this download shouldn't count against my bandwidth usage. However if I'm downloading isos all day every day, then some of that bandwidth should be counted.
Also, during non-busy times for that region, large bandwidth use shouldn't be counted, seeing as it isn't disadvantaging anyone.
There should be no "hard line" between free bandwidth and 1$ per mB bandwidth. The users average bandwidth usage per month should be used in calculating their monthly rate, and they should pay for the next month based on their projected usage.
I once had an ISP that had a monthly cap, it was awful. My two cents (how much they charged per mb over the 2gb/month) on the matter.
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Bandwidth is cheap, yes... if you are picking it up in a major telco center.
Now go and ask Verizon how much they pay to upgrade entire neighborhoods with fiber-to-the-home. And remember, they are relying on the fact that the customer is almost always going to get the triple-service-deal (tv/internet/phone) which makes them the most money... TWC doesn't have that type of guarantee
TWC doesn't want to run an entirely new infrastructure just
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The goverment is paying for the majority of the costs for fiber to the home, which isn't really to the home, its to the curb. This was a big deal last year and I guess people just delt with it or forgot
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If you are speaking of FIOS you are most certainly wrong. There is indeed a fiber pair that is ran to your home and terminated at an ONT. The location on the ONT is either inside or outside your home. Inside the ONT there is an Ethernet port for internet, an F connector for "cable" TV and four RJ-11 for POTS. Unless my home is considered a curb, FIOS is true fiber to the home.
http: [wikipedia.org]
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More to the point, who gives a shit? If they can provide me the speed that I need I don't really care if it comes into my house on fiber, coax, twisted-pair or tin cans with string.
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Unlimited is not unlimited within what a company says someone is limited too."
I don't know why more people that want to use 'unlimited' bandwidth, and not have ports blocked, etc....don't just get a business connection??
It isn't
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As this whole discussion seems to be about heavy consumer downloader/uploaders who usally don't care if their traffic occurs during non peak hours, it is safe to say that their usage pattern makes for a p
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Re:A new approach to limiting usage is needed (Score:5, Interesting)
That's just it! They DO have the infrastructure in my area. I never experience slow downs due to TW's pipes getting flooded.
This is merely a money grab!
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Re:A new approach to limiting usage is needed (Score:5, Informative)
Not to excuse the cable company but they see it as that they're in a bind trying to trade off how many TV channels they can support (and how many analog ones in particular - (the sooner they die the better) with how many qams they dedicate to cable modems - and the expense of injecting the internet feeds in lower and lower down in the plant to support more and more customers with more and more bandwidth (ie sharing with fewer neighbors)
They shouldn't have ever offered 'unlimited' because as we all know it really isn't and for technical reasons can't be as the customer base increases - they're depending on statistical models which those 5% who use 50% of the resources (if that's a real number) break
Re:A new approach to limiting usage is needed (Score:4, Interesting)
Analog cable isn't going anywhere. Analog Broadcast TV may be going away (that story isn't finished yet), but analog cable to the home will be around for quite a while. The cable companies and their customers are going to very quickly realize that the cable company can serve as the Digital Converter box. All those old sets just need a cable connection and they will live a new life in the digital TV era. No need for all the subscribers to buy separate converter boxes. The cable company does it for you when they shove the signal down the line.
That will be an interesting time. All broadcast will be digital. The cable company will convert some of it back to analog, ship it plus scrambled digital to you, then charge you (again) for a digital converter box to descramble the digital portion of the cable signal so you can see it all on your TV.
Re:A new approach to limiting usage is needed (Score:5, Informative)
Um, I'd say that is accurate, I run an ISP, and without getting out my graphs and doing some basic math, I am tempted to say that is a _conservative_ estimate.
It is the same in tech support, 5% of my customers are the morons I hear from on a weekly basis. They account for about 75% of my total time spent on the phone.
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I mostly deal with video qams which are also qam 256 but different from that point on - 25Mbit/sec is a number we use for reasonable estimates of reality - I think one could argue that it's low for docsi
Re:A new approach to limiting usage is needed (Score:4, Interesting)
This statement is utterly stupid. It is harder to develop backbone capacity than last mile capacity, and ISPs have a very limited amount of backbone capacity. If they can supply a 10M last mile to 1000 customers and only have 1G of backbone, it still makes a lot more sense to give everyone a 10M line than to give everyone a 1M line, because not everyone's going to use it at once and this allows a lot more efficient allocation of bandwidth to whoever's demanding it at any given time. I think that in some instances they could do a better job of this allocation, but this is exactly what they are trying to do with a market solution, and it's no reason to choke off everyone's last mile.
Even if the technology was available to give ISPs a blazingly fast cheap backbone that would let everyone saturate existing last-mile technology, in such a case it would be likely that better last-mile technology exists as well, and you run into the same problem. If you're really so concerned about being able to saturate your line 24 hours a day, you can get a line with a higher SLA (and pay the true market value of the bandwidth). Alternatively, you could exercise some courtesy and just not leave BitTorrent downloading 24/7.
Re:A new approach to limiting usage is needed (Score:5, Insightful)
The last mile is where the problem is. There is competition galore for long haul fiber (ie, to build a backbone) and you can pick up a dark fiber us footprint for under 20 million. Optics to light the gear and all of your routers will cost more.
If it were easier to build the last mile, you'd have 20 people with a cable to your house fighting to connect you to the one or two backbones.
Re:A new approach to limiting usage is needed (Score:5, Insightful)
That statement translates to "give me what you agreed to sell me, which I dutifully paid for". I'd hardly call that stupid, except in the sense that we shouldn't need to say it in the first place.
Most people don't care about the plight of the poor, starving "merely" 30% market share ISP. They care that they can play their online games, get their email, surf the web, and download streaming HD porn. The end user's obligation to "care" ends when they send in their monthly check.
The ISP, on the other hand, has an obligation to actually provide a reasonable approximation to what they've sold. Does that mean they'd need to charge far, far more per customer? Too bad! If they can't provide it, they can't sell it. If they sell it, they damned well better provide it.
Alternatively, you could exercise some courtesy and just not leave BitTorrent downloading 24/7.
Why? I want to sell you this orange, the whole, unlimited, complete orange - But wait! I sold the same orange to nine other people, so could you "considerately" only eat 10% of it and leave the rest for others?
Don't sell what you don't have. End of story.
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Re:A new approach to limiting usage is needed (Score:4, Interesting)
I've got to say that I prefer the idea of capping the total bandwidth used over the course of the month to capping the maximum speed.
I'm on PlusNet at the moment and their caps seem to work generally quite well. You get emailed when you exceed about half your quota, then emailed again later, and they progressively throttle certain stuff down as you get perilously close to the cap (once you hit the cap you get severely throttled). The caps and throttling only apply during "peak times" though (ISTR 16:00 - 00:00). Of course, when they initially implemented the caps there was outcry from all the torrenters and quite a lot of them canceled their accounts (needless to say, this was quite good for the service as a whole
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Give me the bandwidth to stream HDTV and I'll do it.
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WTH is wrong with you people? (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure it isn't ideal but anything bar a REAL flat rate isn't ideal.
Have you all gone crazy?!? where am I? My browser window says slashdot.org but I feel like I'm at a luddite convention! You're all talking like a bunch of nansy-ass accountants and librarians.
Applauding the implementation of bandwidth hard-caps at the ISP level? You're all fucking crazy! 60GB/month?!? And you're happy with that?!?! You've got to be kidding, do you know how many Slashdot readers that kind of cap would cripple? (by Slashdot readers I mean people who actually value technologies like the internet, and call and complain to their ISPs if it isn't delivered properly...which is apparently almost noone in this thread)
As a poster further up said, this is a money grab. If I pay for a 3mbps connection, or a 6mbps connection...then dammit that's what I should get! If the infrastructure of cable is a limiting factor then they need to RE-INVEST IN INFRASTRUCTURE instead of putting out another dividend to their pigs-rolling-in-telecom-monopoly-shit stockholders.
I can't believe how many of you are bending over and giving a nod to the telecom monopolies, they should be INNOVATING! I.e. Improving services, reducing latencies, increasing bandwidth, expanding coverage, and ultimately PRESERVING THE YET UNTAPPED AND UNEXPLORED APPLICATION SPACE OF BROADBAND.
The next thing they'll do is standardize tiered billing for low-latency connections (not lower latency mind you, but the one you ALREADY HAVE NOW), are you all going to clap them on the back for that brilliant idea too?!?
my god wtf...
If used smart, it gives me 60GB/month.
What nauseating crap...I guess we should all count our blessings and be happy we aren't living in 1970s east berlin...that toilet paper isn't considered a luxury item...of course the 2008 east berlin has FAR better broadband coverage than we do now...but then what civilized country on this planet doesn't have better broadband than us? "Gimme 60GB/month, at least I can say I'm an american where consumers come first and we have access to the the best services and technologies"...what a crock. It grieves me terribly to read comments like these on Slashdot of all places...you've all turned into complacent kowtowing pussies!
Re:WTH is wrong with you people? (Score:5, Insightful)
WTF do you do if 60GB will "cripple" you? Download 10 TV shows/day? Where do you put all the stuff?
There's limited bandwidth that's shared amongst all users. Sure bandwidth can be increased but that costs money and who do you think pays for it? Do you think any ISP can invest billions in infrastructure and not charge anybody for the extra cost? Last time I checked ISPs were businesses whose purpose is to make money and not hand it out. Put yourself into the shoes of an ISP? What would you do? I'm sure you wouldn't mind investing a crap load of money and not get anything in return.
I'm not applauding the move but I call what I have reasonable. Before this plan I'm on, I had a so called "unlimited" plan. Unlimited? Yeah right! The fineprint said unlimited subject to an "acceptable use policy", stating that if my volume is more than 10 times the average usage (where average meant take the top and bottom 5% away and calculate the average from what's left...), I get cut off 'til the end of the month. The deal I have now not only costs less, it also gives me substantially more traffic than the "unlimited" deal.
Limited bandwidth and unlimited traffic don't go too well together. But of course ISPs shouldn't advertise unlimited plans if they can't keep their promises.
Btw. what made you think I'm American? Believe it or not, there are other countries out there who offer cable as well. Amazing isn't it?
Re:WTH is wrong with you people? (Score:5, Informative)
When I lived in Toronto with 3 other engineering students, we ran over the 60 GB limit within a couple weeks when we were trying to limit our bandwidth usage (there was no surcharge, but frequent threats from Rogers to cut us off), with "regular" usage, where "regular" includes frequent multiple-ssh sessions with GUIs being displayed and ftp'ing bulk data to and from the school servers and so forth. If we would have been cut off, we would have been forced to commute to the school on all weekends and stay the night on many weekdays, and given the money a student can't afford and the time this takes it could well be crippling.
I agree with much of the rest of your point, though.
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hard cap vs overusage fees vs bw restriction (Score:5, Interesting)
I think the fair way to deal with heavy users is to give everyone the same fast rate for their first twenty gigs or so per month. If they exceed the cap, there are three things that can be done:
The first option is bad for customers because they don't want to have their connection cut off abruptly. The second is bad because it leaves open the possibility of getting a surprise bill for hundreds or thousands of dollars. The third option, imposing a bandwidth cap once users exceed their monthly limit, solves the problem and is much less intrusive: their internet still works (just not as fast), and they don't get any surprise bills. If they want their service to be fast again, they can pay a fee. (note: to avoid congestion, the payment cycle would have to be staggered so that everyone doesn't have their caps lifted the same time each month)
Another approach ISPs would like to use is to target specific applications (bittorrent, youtube) rather than users, but this is just a short-term remedy that doesn't address the real problem - users who don't care how much bandwidth they use.
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Re:hard cap vs overusage fees vs bw restriction (Score:4, Interesting)
I've experimented with PAYG Internet using a couple of wireless data cards (GPRS/3G networks). Once you start being billed by the kilobyte, it's straight back to text only browsers (those advertising banners, corporate logo frames that fill the entire screen and flash intro's are real bandwidth munchers).
Don't do the corporation's bidding! (Score:4, Insightful)
The first fallacy is to assume that there is a problem which can be solved by generating less traffic: New uses will always require higher bandwidths and generate more traffic, so even casual users will exceed any perceived "acceptable" limit. Back in the nineties, students were asked not to use the web (with its bandwidth eating graphics) too much. Internet access was much more expensive back then. Would the internet be as fast and as cheap as it is today if people had restrained themselves? The web dwarfed email traffic. P2P dwarfs web traffic. HDTV streaming or whatever is next will dwarf P2P traffic. The only solution is to keep upgrading the net.
The second fallacy is that generating much traffic is unfair towards casual users who pay the same price. There's always someone who uses the net much less. Even without any P2P, most of the
The third fallacy is that imposing traffic limits would reduce the problem: If you can't download all you want, are you going to use up your limit at night or when it's convenient, i.e. when everybody else uses the net because that's when it's convenient for them too? The problem isn't the total traffic, it's the bandwidth at peak times. Whether anyone downloads hundreds of gigabytes at night is totally irrelevant, because there is no off-peak bandwidth shortage.
Re:A new approach to limiting usage is needed (Score:5, Funny)
And you could get packages that allow you to do different things, so if all you want is instant messaging and html, you can buy one package, but if you want to download a file there will be additional fees unless you have a download add-on. VoIP would be free if you get a phone through your cable company, but you'd need a different add-on without the phone.
And they could charge less for users who only access local sites but charge more for those who receive information internationally, unless you get the international package.
This all sounds like a great idea. It's not just a ploy to squeeze out that extra dime, these are great features that you can add to your plan! This way everyone gets what they want, even if it's more expensive. It's also less complicated since you pick the plans you want instead of getting a service that does everything, because no one really knows which features are included with "everything".
But seriously, do you really want to see ISPs turn into cell phone carriers?
And to think... (Score:2)
Re:And to think... (Score:4, Insightful)
And to think that I was thinking about switching to Time-Warner, however now I will not.
Why, because of the absurd notion that you should get what you pay for - and vice versa? Flat pricing just means that someone like me - who isn't downloading movies all day - is helping pay the bills of people who are.
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Re:And to think... (Score:5, Insightful)
Never seen a company that charges monthly rates go DOWN when introducing change.
You'll keep getting screwed so who cares if you share with the top tier?
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They aren't the ONLY ISP for this fiber rollout, so they do have direct competition in this market. That could explain their wi
Re:And to think... (Score:5, Insightful)
It will be interesting to see what effect this has on digital media distribution online. How much will it stymie growth, if at all?
Re:And to think... (Score:5, Insightful)
Which is bullshit since most ISP's advertise "unlimited" access AND bandwidth. You're not "paying for the other user" according to CONTRACT. Sorry buddy. I just find it hypocritical to accuse another customer of "paying for him", when the company is itself at fault for false advertising and advertising bandwidth it doesn't have.
My ISP advertise full unlimited unrestricted bandwidth for a monthly price per month, if it can't handle that, that's not my problem THAT is what I payed for *in the contract*.
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Frist Po (Score:3, Funny)
Competition is good (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Competition is good (Score:4, Insightful)
And that's exactly what they want (Score:5, Insightful)
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What is the norm?
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I'm happy with my 1.5/384k. It's the only plan I can get other than dial-up.
Consistent connection (Score:2)
Probably a good idea (Score:5, Insightful)
What the difference is here is that they will actually not be "capping" the bandwidth per say but actually metering it. That's akin to buying 1Mbps on a Co-Lo that is on a burstable 1Gigabit link. That is, you get the sum total of bandwidth you could use if you were at 1mbps for the month but your connection is actually WAY faster(wider). Then you get charged for overages. This is great because it charges for usage and make it way less expensive for people who simply browse the net in their off time as opposed to those people who have no life and upload videos of themselves whoring on youtube all the time.
This isn't news (Score:3, Informative)
I don't see a problem with this, having usage tiers with costs depending how much you plan to use is fine. The problem in the past has always been claims of "unlimited" until you reach a magical, secret cap. I don't think users will have a problem with tiers as long as you make the exact numbers completely clear, and of course that you charge reasonable rates.
US ISPs have charged different rates for different speeds for a long time, how is this any different? It brings clarity to users.
I, for example pay $35/month and am told I get 2.5Mbps down, 760kbps up, and 30GB total transfer. And if I want to transfer more, I pay more. It seems reasonable to me.
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I get what I pay for... (Score:2, Insightful)
Time Warner customer (Score:5, Interesting)
1. Defined limits, overlimit fees, and prices for tiered service
2. Monitor software to show customers where they're at
I'm curious about the monitor software. Will it have options to shutdown internet access based on time frames and activity? This would be useful for people that want to budget their internet usage. Also it could useful if the computer is infected.
Re:Time Warner customer (Score:5, Insightful)
How about by user? I'm thinking of parents that will now have to settle agruements between siblings: "Moooomm! Jonny used up all the internet."
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Or
Or
Or
Or
Or
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I thin
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unlimited options... (Score:2)
Interestingly enough... (Score:2)
Of course, this all depends on the exact numbers that Comcast will use. I strongly suspect that I blow past a 2Gb monthly limit in about 1 week. That's about how often I download a full game demo, ISO or movie (iTunes, for anyone wanting to accuse me of Piracy) per month. And depending on release schedule
Its been said before and I will say it again (Score:2)
Possible problem... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Possible problem... (Score:4, Insightful)
At present, what does it cost Joe Luser if he gets nailed with a spambot and spews a few gigs of SPAM onto the Internet? Nothing extra (maybe a bit of speed on his connection) and he likely won't even really know he's been pwned.
This way, when he gets a $300 bill for over using his bandwidth, he'll most likely fix the damned problem and take steps to ensure it doesn't happen again so he doesn't get blindsided by a lage ISP bill.
Or, he'll blame the ISP and get off the net - either way the spammers lose a spambot, and we admin types win. Bring it on, TW!
Soko
Re:Possible problem... (Score:5, Insightful)
The fact is there are a lot of people who are intelligent and not tech-savvy, either because they grew up too late and are stuck in a pre-Internet mindset, or just don't have the aptitude for tech; but these people still have plenty to contribute online, and cutting them off just because you think they're "lusers" is foolish and short-sighted.
It's also telling that your primary interest is in the experience of "we admin types" rather than wanting the Internet to be a vast, diverse place; and you didn't even consider the possibility of other capping schemes that don't just kick people off because they're not as geeky as you.
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> is that users who aren't tech-savvy enough to prevent things like this from
> happening deserve to suffer
Please don't take away my driver's licence, Your Honour. I know that I've run over 10 people in the past month, creating several widows and orphans. But you see, Your Honour, I'm a car user who isn't tech-savvy enough to prevent things like this from happening. I don't deserve to suffer.
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There's one dishonest company that is charging people 15c/megabyte for excess usage on a 200mbyte plan. There have been people with $20k internet bills.
http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies.cfm?t=862549 [whirlpool.net.au]
http://users.bigpond.net.au/Ice_Cold/BPbill01.JPG [bigpond.net.au]
Good idea (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Charge people for how much network capacity they actually use, ie: this. This is how gas, electricity, and other things are portioned out, and I haven't heard many people complianing about how its unfair.
2. Start trying to get rid of some of the traffic. See: Comcast screwing with P2P.
Of the two, I like this a lot better. My mom can pay for a little bit of network capacity, I can pay for a lot, and we both get what we paid for.
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Or 3.) They could actually increase their capacity by investing in their infrastructure. They're going to have to do this sooner or later, and it may as well be sooner.
Re:Good idea (Score:5, Interesting)
In Europe, you can get a service that offer phone (VoIP) + TV (over IP, with HD and DVR) + internet (up to 20Mbps/1Mbps) for 30 euros/mo.
No restriction on the amount of DL.
Then again, they have a weird thing in that domain: actual competition. All operators are actually trying hard to earn your money. But shh... Europe is communist, we all know that...
They'll shoot themselves in the foot (Score:2)
I can't see how bandwidth caps would be a good idea for the cable companies, especially when there are competitors [reuters.com] out there [betanews.com] that don't need to worry about capping their customer's usage. I also want to know how this would play out if other cable companies followed suit, considering that they're promising much faster speeds. [cnn.com] I would think that at 160Mbps you could hit your cap pretty quickly (depending of course on what the cap is set at, and your actual usage).
I'm a Time Warner customer, and as far as
They tried it in Norway (Score:5, Interesting)
Of course, it is all about the marketing. You don't say "we degrade your connection if you exceed this quota", you say "In addition you get EXTRA HIGH SUPER SPEED for the first 20 gigabytes (ZOMG!!!! thousands of songs) each month". You then proceed to sell "top-up packs" at your website where users can pay for extra quota, and then offer an optional service by which quota... err... extra-bandwidth-top-up-packs
5% use 50% (Score:3, Insightful)
Give those 5% some virus scanners ! !
too logical... (Score:5, Insightful)
say i download linux distro iso's all month. i use up 99% of my ISP's capacity, then one day my neighbor starts up a VPN and telnets in. Since he's used hardly any bandwidth, his packets get top priority. my bittorrent client slows down a little bit then goes back up when he's done.
that's a fair way to do unlimited service.
it just seems like any throttling back beyond prioritization is just a waste of installed capacity.
got it in one (Score:5, Interesting)
Back in '02 Internode http://www.internode.on.net/ [on.net] introduced Flat Rate plans, whereby you could download as much as you wanted while the network wasn't congested, however when utilisation reached 100%, those with the highest downloads over the last 28 days (rolling period) would be progressivly slowed down, to as low as dial-up speed. Once the network was less congested, your speed would ratchet back up (again depending on network congestion and your priority based on your downloads).
Those that only occassionally downloaded large files would get full speed pretty much all the time, those that downloaded continuously would see their downloads slow during peak periods.
It wasn't rocket science, but that 28day rolling period and how it worked was a confusion that eventually forced the cancellation of these type of plans - which is too bad, as they essentially gave everyone a fair go depending on how much you downloaded. No excess charges, just a flat fee and as much GB as you could squeeze out of the link.
It was a great system and I was sorry to see it go. I'm sure the developer of the software was dissapointed in much larger ways - this system could have made bandwidth provisioning & customer charging a lot easier to predict and manage.
More info in an FAQ http://whirlpool.net.au/article.cfm/1037 [whirlpool.net.au]
Well I don't mind... (Score:2)
As long as they offer a nice selection of caps that is with maybe even an unlimited one (expensive as that level would be). And of course they have to actually let the customer know of the caps (ie: don't be fuckers like comcast).
Cablevision did it here in NY. Major Backlash. (Score:2)
I moved to verizon FIOS asap and i've been in heaven since. Its a quality service, that doesnt cap you for uploading or downloading.
I work in 3d animation and special fx here in NY, and i often need to tranfer large batches of frames at film res from home to clients or from home to the office
I am advocating fair use policy (Score:2)
Time Issues (Score:2, Interesting)
And it will be really interesting when ..... (Score:2)
I am on a metered system, and this is more fair (Score:5, Interesting)
I am very happy with this system, but to be clear, the reason why I am happy with this system is my ISP has provided choices. If Time Warner fails to provide similar choice then it will be awful.
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eclipse have been good to me in the past. bethere.co.uk are even better. They're not capped, I get a static IP and the speed is 24Mbps (sure, I only get 12 or so, but it's better than anyone else is able to give me). All for 19 quid a month.
Yes, they have a FUP, no, I haven't been called on it yet despite frequent torreent traffic.
New Zealand works this way already. (Score:2)
Additionally, it puts a price on p2p. If you're paying $1.50/GB of traffic (each direction), then that 4GB torrent that you let run until 1.0? It just cost you $12+. It pu
It won't play out like you think it will... (Score:2)
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Like CPU scheduling (Score:2)
Welcome to how the rest of the world does it (Score:2)
How about... (Score:2)
I used to live in a small town in NE Pennsylvania. The only place I could get broadband was the local podunk phone company. I paid $70/month for 512 Kb/s, and I got it all the time if I wanted it. I think that Time Warner could do what my backwoods, East Bumblefuck phone company did if they really cared about a rise in bandwidth us
Truth comes out (Score:2, Interesting)
Ad bandwidth (Score:4, Insightful)
If they want to police bandwidth (Score:4, Insightful)
sad but necessary (Score:3, Insightful)
Bandwidth caps and tiered pricing are a result of a few people not being able to exercise some self-restraint. It's the tragedy of the commons again. And the result of it is that bandwidth costs will go up significantly and everybody suffers.
The culprits here are not the cable companies, it's people who believe that "unlimited bandwidth" entitles them to running BitTorrent and Joost 24/7, in clear violation of the actual TOS.
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The meanings of words evolve. Bandwidth does equal capacity now. It didn't, but it's so much a part of the common lexicon that the tide is not going to be turned.
Re:Good (Score:4, Interesting)
Also as downloading movies and web-based apps become more mainstream, they need to be reasonable with bandwidth "tiers" and tiers should certainly grow over time. I wouldn't consider usage "heavy" at the present time until data transfer is >20GB/month.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Whenever a corporation plays the "fairly" card, erase the word and replace it with "more profitably". And that's not cynicism, that's realism. Time warner is a for profit enterprise, not a public service, and that is what this is really about.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Back when AOL was actually worth getting (at least Neverwinter Nights made it so for me), they started out with the pay-as-you-go idea. You paid a basic fee for access and a few minutes and then they charged you for anything beyond that at a per-minute rate. Worked out OK, though I did find myself going over pretty regularly. But when they switched to the flat-rate all-
Re:Good (Score:5, Informative)
First, there's abuse of the term "bandwidth", which has nothing to do with the amount of data downloaded. Bandwidth is how much of a frequency range is being used on the wire to provide the service. That's it.
"Date rate" is how much data the bandwidth, encoding, compression, and such allow you to get out of the bandwidth. It's also what ISPs limit you to when they say "megabits per second" or "kilobits per second".
Total monthly data transfer available for an always-on connection at a certain data rate can be calculated as the data rate per second times the number of seconds per month. Capped usage for total monthly data transfer, which is what this article is actually about, can be thought of as the data rate times the number of seconds time the percentage of utilization. What they're wanting to limit here is that percentage of utilization of what they're selling you access to use.
One way to lower total monthly data transfer for a customer is to lower the data rate. That means things come down slower all month. Another is to limit the amount of time for which the line is fully utilized. Many business users of truly high-speed access pay for what are called "burstable lines". You get the whole DS3 or entire OC-12 or whatever type of line it is. You get billed with the understanding that you use a certain percentage of data rate or less a certain percentage of the time, and that the rest of the time you can use all of it without paying extra.
When I was in the ISP field and buying our backbone lines from bigger network providers, we typically leased lines with the first 15% or 25% of the full data rate included, with the stipulation that 5% or 10% of the time we could use all the data transfer the line had to offer without being billed extra. That meant that if we experienced abnormal peak demand, we didn't get our lines saturated. It also meant we didn't get soaked paying for peak capacity all the time. We in fact got a report each month showing the percentage, on average over each 5-minute increment, we used of the line's data rate the whole month. We could look at the chart being built (by MRTG) as the month progressed, too.
The reason total traffic is the way ISPs want to deal with end users is that it's easier to explain "you can move 20 gigabytes" than "90th percentile usage will be at no more than 30% of the data rate capacity of the circuit". Still, I think people would understand easily enough if they were told, "For 60 hours a month, you can max out your line. The rest of the time, you're going to be at 1 Mbps".
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Those who DO use the service there
Improved translation (Score:3, Insightful)
2) 5% of customers leave
3) Net traffic usage goes down 50%, while revenue only decreases 5%
4) Increased profit!!!