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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.'"
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Belgian ISP Claims One Customer Downloads 2.7TB

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  • Human nature (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Colin Smith ( 2679 ) on Saturday August 21, 2010 @04:07AM (#33322412)

    It's free, so consume it till it's all gone.

     

    • Re:Human nature (Score:4, Informative)

      by SimonTheSoundMan ( 1012395 ) on Saturday August 21, 2010 @05:12AM (#33322588)

      BT Broadband claimed I used 170GB per month on average over a 12 month period using my 2.5Mb connection.

      Meanwhile, 2.7TB is nothing if you have a leased line. Just had a two week film shoot, used 6TiB. We have had to transfer all the daily rushes via the Internet.

    • Human nature? That's the nature of life. All life forms from bacteria to dogs to people fail to rationally ration themselves. If there's food on the ground, and you don't eat it or take it, something else probably will and you won't get any benefit from it.

      Overcoming eons of evolutionarily reinforced instinct to consume all that you can as fast as you can is something that humans are better at than most other species. Lets give ourselves credit where credit is due.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by ultranova ( 717540 )

        Human nature? That's the nature of life. All life forms from bacteria to dogs to people fail to rationally ration themselves. If there's food on the ground, and you don't eat it or take it, something else probably will and you won't get any benefit from it.

        Actually, most animals change their rate of reproduction based on available food resources.

    • Hogs? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Dan541 ( 1032000 ) on Saturday August 21, 2010 @06:21AM (#33322824) Homepage

      How are such people data-hogs? They are using what they have paid for.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by sycodon ( 149926 )

        Yep, If you sell something called an "Unlimited" account, then don't bitch when people use it in an Unlimited manner.

        • Re:Hogs? (Score:4, Insightful)

          by wagnerrp ( 1305589 ) on Saturday August 21, 2010 @10:11AM (#33324520)
          For what its worth, the ISP was not bitching about those users. They were using it as an advertisement to people on their cheaper, capped subscriptions, "Look just how much you can download if you upgrade to our more expensive, uncapped subscriptions!"
      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        >>>How are such people data-hogs? They are using what they have paid for.

        Not really. Imagine if electricity worked like internet data. i.e. You pay $400 a month and get unlimited usage. Most of us would use around 1000 KWh per month, but then you'd have a few people that would run their AC at 50 degrees, while the whole house was lighted even in rooms that are not being used, and have an electric-powered pool in the back with an elaborate fountain running all day and night. i.e. Splurging.

        They

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          Except if they paid $400/month for unlimited use at a specific rate, and then used it all, then they used $400 worth of [bandwidth/electricity]. If they did not want people to use their [bandwidth/electricity], they should not have advertised and sold their service as unlimited.

          Incidentally, as stated in the article:

          Telenet has not posted this information as a complaint of what they have to deal with, but to give us "a better picture of what exactly is possible with this new way of surfing."

          the ISP is not complaining at all.

  • If he had a decent connection and was downloading all the time. Unfortunately if I tried it I would be well inside the 1c per MB excess usage tariff within a day. and my ISP is owned by bankrupt Australians who need every 1c they can get
    • Re:Its possible (Score:5, Informative)

      by dk90406 ( 797452 ) on Saturday August 21, 2010 @04:23AM (#33322454)
      You'll only need 8 Mb/sec to get that 2.7 TB over a 30 day period. If I fully utilized my (Danish connection) I could get more than double of that. Koreans and Japanese would get 20 times. I suspect both UL and DL are included.
      • Re:Its possible (Score:5, Insightful)

        by TheRaven64 ( 641858 ) on Saturday August 21, 2010 @05:19AM (#33322618) Journal

        I have a 10Mb/s connection, but it gets throttled if I go over certain thresholds (3000MB in the morning, 1500MB in the evening) at 'peak' times, with 14 hours in the day when there is no throttling. The throttling lasts for 6 hours, so maximum total throughput is achieved by staying under that limit. That means that the maximum that I can download in a day is (a href="http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=14%20hours%20*%2010Mb%2Fs%20%2B%204500MB">14 hours at 10Mb/s plus 4500MB, or 67.5GB. That gives just under 2TB/month, so I'd be unable to download 2.7TB with my connection.

        Mind you, I have one of the cheapest connections that my ISP provides. If I bought their 20Mb/s package, I could download just over 4TB/month. With their 50Mb/s package, it would be over 16TB. This is in the UK.

        Even so, 2.7TB seems excessive. In a typical month, I download well under 100GB. The only time I've ever hit my ISP's throttling caps was when I was uploading the source material for a DVD to my publisher. Even with an Internet radio stream left running most of the time and fairly regular downloads from iPlayer, I don't come close to 1TB.

        • Minor correction, the throttling actually lasts 5 hours 10am-3pm and 4pm to 9pm for downloads, although the upload is 3pm - 8pm, so there is an overlap. But still it is a pain. The daytime cap is not too bad, but the 1.5GB during the evening is so easy to go over, I often get throttled back to 2.5Mb.

      • You'll only need 8 Mb/sec to get that 2.7 TB over a 30 day period. If I fully utilized my (Danish connection) I could get more than double of that. Koreans and Japanese would get 20 times. I suspect both UL and DL are included.

        We regularly hit that, and though the "download" traffic isnt actually initiated on our end (it's actually uploads to our server), I am sure it's still measured the same way. The post production work for Star Trek Phase 2 [startreknewvoyages.com] eats a LOT of bandwidth in both directions. The website on the other hand is only 1/4 to 1/2 a terabyte (outgoing - and of course roughly 1/10th incoming).

        Fortunately, we've got a business account, and no traffic throttles or such. Dreading the day when/if more US ISPs decide to start me

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by ickleberry ( 864871 )
      maybe he was running a TOR node then?
    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by kneutral ( 1882628 )
      I'm visiting Australia for work and was shocked that the hotels have usage limits on their wireless (in addition to their already mildly annoying practice of adding a surcharge for wifi usage - though the more pricey hotels do this in most countries it seems, whereas the cheaper hotels provide it for free). $20/day for a 500Mb/week limited internet connection. At first I thought that would be fine, I'd cut out skype, streaming video, and stop downloading podcasts and wouldn't have to worry. Sadly I'm 4 d
      • If you've cut out the "heavy usage" stuff at the hotel, what else are you doing to use that much data? I travel frequently as well and don't use that much data (unless I'm streaming Netflix or something). Web browsing, occasional VPN, work/personal email don't add up to a whole lot, especially for just a couple hours at the hotel each night.
      • by Dan541 ( 1032000 )

        Have a look into using 3G wireless prepaid. Surprisingly it is often cheaper than what the hotels will charge.

  • Who cares? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by McTickles ( 1812316 ) on Saturday August 21, 2010 @04:13AM (#33322432)
    It is the ISPs problem if they can't deliver the bandwidth they promise their customers. Their business is data transferings so if they should rejoices peoples use their pipes to transfer datas.
    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by _KiTA_ ( 241027 )

      It is the ISPs problem if they can't deliver the bandwidth they promise their customers.

      Their business is data transferings so if they should rejoices peoples use their pipes to transfer datas.

      Except the industry -- at least, in the US -- is nowhere near capable of handling 100% utilization by 100% of customers. Heck, I'd be surprised if they're ready for 100% utilization by even 10% of customers.

      Like it or not, everyone's fat pipe is sold under two unspoken conditions: That you're not going to use it 24x7, and that those who vastly under utilize (grandmothers checking their email on DSL, for example) are going to subsidize the rest of us.

      In theory, they'd be working on infrastructure to supple

      • Re:Who cares? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Dan541 ( 1032000 ) on Saturday August 21, 2010 @06:37AM (#33322872) Homepage

        It's ok to oversell services but customers who want to use 100% must be able to do so. Otherwise the ISP is failing to provide.

      • by mwvdlee ( 775178 ) on Saturday August 21, 2010 @06:55AM (#33322944) Homepage

        In theory, they'd be working on infrastructure to supplement the need, but in reality, well, buying hookers and yachts for lobbyists and politicians aren't cheap, you know.

        I don't know how much a hooker currently goes for, but surely it's cheaper than a server-grade router.
        So if they were smart they'd just buy each of those 25 top users a hooker. That'll keep those nerds occupied bragging about how they "made love" to a "woman" on forums, which uses a lot less bandwidth.
        It's much cheaper than upgrading hardware.

    • Their business is data transferings so if they should rejoices peoples use their pipes to transfer datas.

      comparethemeerkat.com. Simples!

    • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Saturday August 21, 2010 @06:23AM (#33322838)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • 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

    • You must run up at least 2.7TB a month with your unusual use of the letter S.

  • by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 21, 2010 @04:14AM (#33322436)

    Poor guy just left Windows Update set to automatic.

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Actually I think he was trying to get a video driver that would work with Linux.
  • WANTED! (Score:2, Funny)

    by neonux ( 1000992 )

    We will pay up to $50,000 for any information leading to the identify and ultimately capture of the individuals present in the Ten Most Wanted list published by Belgian ISP Telenet.

    Warmest regards,

    Signed RIAA, MPAA and BSA.

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by Anubis IV ( 1279820 )
      Luckily for you, screen names are given for four of them in the image in TFA. Where do I collect my $200,000?
  • Hardly a big deal (Score:2, Informative)

    by neoprint ( 949158 )
    I've done just under 2tb in a month before, I've heard of other people on the same internet plan as me (Big Time on New Zealand's Telecom, unlmited ADSL2+) before they took it away because of people like me. Most I heard of was just shy of 3TB, this was on a horribly shaped connection too. Why is this news?
    • by _KiTA_ ( 241027 )

      I've done just under 2tb in a month before, I've heard of other people on the same internet plan as me (Big Time on New Zealand's Telecom, unlmited ADSL2+) before they took it away because of people like me.

      Most I heard of was just shy of 3TB, this was on a horribly shaped connection too.

      Why is this news?

      This is news because if the US ISPs have their way, we'll be limited to approximately what, 0.37% of this per month?

      2700 GB -> 5GB AT&T cap, 10GB theoretical cap by my ISP (cableone), etc etc.

      About 1/3 of 1 percent of what your connection could use?

      So in other words, the people selling us "Unlimited Broadband" would really like it if we would only use our connections about 2.6 hours a month (0.37% * 30 days = .111 days * 24 hrs = 2.6 hours).

      Of course, my math is probably wrong. It's 4 AM, and harble

  • Download caps? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by loufoque ( 1400831 ) on Saturday August 21, 2010 @04:24AM (#33322460)

    What are these? Is that a relic from the past?

    • The ISP in question has only very recently (since juli) stopped using download caps. They had an 80Gb limit on their most expensive subscription IIRC. This could be people acting out, downloading whatever they can and repairing their ratio's, etc. I'd like to see some more statistics in a couple of months, my guess is usage would level off. With the speeds I'm getting on Telenet I think 2.7 TB would be an always on connection going full blast for the whole month.

    • ...in a galaxy far, far away in the retro future!

    • Nope. It's a glimpse of the future.
  • Well... (Score:4, Informative)

    by Raxxon ( 6291 ) on Saturday August 21, 2010 @04:25AM (#33322468)

    In theory:

    28 Day "Month" (4 weeks), 24h/day, 60 min/h, 60 sec/min, 2.5Mb/sec..

    I see a possible 6Tb in total transfer (and that's assuming you're not also transmitting!), and that wouldn't be saturating my internet link. However I do find it quite difficult to (1) Maintain 2.5Mb/sec constant (speaking of Torrents/other P2P in general) and (2) Having things to constantly download at that rate.

  • by thue ( 121682 ) on Saturday August 21, 2010 @04:37AM (#33322504) Homepage

    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.

    • by Jah-Wren Ryel ( 80510 ) on Saturday August 21, 2010 @05:12AM (#33322586)

      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.

      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.

      • by CharlyFoxtrot ( 1607527 ) on Saturday August 21, 2010 @07:32AM (#33323152)

        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: (Score:3, Informative)

      by mobby_6kl ( 668092 )

      First of all, it's 2680GB, so it's more like 2.6TB. Second of all, where are you getting your data transfer prices? Amazon has some of the lowest prices around (unless you count the "unlimited" bullshit on dreamhost or something), and even with the >150TB discount it's $0.08/GB [amazon.com], bringing the bill to $214. Of course AWS's pricing isn't directly comparable to an ISP's but that's the best I could find. Finally, Telenet's most expensive offering is 99 Euro, so effectively everybody else is subsidizing this g

      • Uhhh I don't get 5~7 9s of uptime on my ISP you? I also don't get and fancy ass hosting stuff.

        http://www.100tb.com/dedicated-hosting/ [100tb.com] = $0.002/GB and that is a hosting solution not simply a line you get to use as an ISP is (also it is 50% off atm). Comes with a computer and all that shit... and given that this is an ISP they likely pay even less than this. (BTW when i started looking I expected to find like $0.02/GB which is sorta normal... I've no idea how 100tb can possibly exist without crushing its co
      • by Bert64 ( 520050 )

        It depends where that bandwidth is going among other things...

        In the UK at least (not sure about belgium), traffic over the telco's adsl platform is very expensive and that just gets it to the isp, it then has to traverse the internet...

        On the other hand, internet transit is quite cheap, he.net for instance appear to offer $1/mbps (quick google search - http://he.net/ip_transit.html?gclid=CJi3mPy3yqMCFQGY2AodCWImuQ [he.net]), 1mbps continuous over a month is good for about 300GB in each direction... A large isp is a

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Rich0 ( 548339 )

      Yup. The real problem is charging for an unmetered service, and then trying to somehow meter it.

      Look, is it "unlimited" or not? If yes, then just live with what you promised. If not, come up with something reasonable.

      The last mile of telecom is a natural monopoly, and price should be PUC regulated just like your water or electricity. Does the electric company publish a list of top-10 electric consumers? Of course not - those are its best customers.

      I'm fine with paying by the GB, provided those rates ar

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by mobby_6kl ( 668092 )

        > Does the electric company publish a list of top-10 electric consumers? Of course not - those are its best customers.

        Those customers also pay per kW-h used, so this is a completely opposite situation.

        • by Rich0 ( 548339 )

          Yup, which was my whole point. The model has to change so that it isn't the opposite situation.

      • The real problem is charging for an unmetered service, and then trying to somehow meter it.

        But many slashdotters become hysterical at the suggestion of metered service (which I would prefer, being a low-volume user).

        • by Rich0 ( 548339 )

          I'm a moderate-volume user, and I wouldn't mind it if the price was fair.

          If 3TB is really $50, then 1TB would probably be $10-20. 100GB would be only $1-2. The typical email+web customer might pay 50 cents per month.

          Sure, throw in a $5/month fixed billing charge like the utilities do. Your ISP might sell email for another $1/month/account, and webhosting/etc for $1/month for those cheapo file-only accounts.

          The key is for the pricing to be fair - wholesale cost plus a few percent profit. The utility has

  • All you can eat (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    So, the ISP, in essence, advertises and sells an all-you-can-eat buffet, then complains when people pay for it and proceed to eat all they can? Cry me a river.

  • by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Saturday August 21, 2010 @04:58AM (#33322556)
    The article itself mentions it. Youtube is 1080p, netflix is getting into online streaming. Everything is getting bigger. Alien Swarm (a free and short game on Steam) 2GB, Left4Dead 2 is 7.5GB, god forbid someone pirates some 1080p movies then there's another 12GB gone.

    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.
    • Don't they have 30GB caps in Japan?
      Per day, of course.

    • Although Telstra would dearly like to be a monoploy again those days are long gone. These days there are plenty of ISP's to choose from [whirlpool.net.au]. The Optus cable plan I have been on for over 10yrs years had a 20GB cap, when I recently started bumping up against the cap for a couple of months in a row they rang me up and said for an extra $5/month I could have a 170GB cap. It was win-win, I was happy they noticed and offered a cheap solution and they are happy to be getting an extra $5/m. I know Optus are far from th
  • 8,07 days. (Score:2, Informative)

    by Tito1337 ( 1585785 )
    The guy has a Turbonet connection, means he has 30Mbits down and 1,25Mbit up. If he used this at full speed, 2680GB would only take 8,07 days.
  • so what? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by yyxx ( 1812612 ) on Saturday August 21, 2010 @05:12AM (#33322584)

    It's easy to accumulate 2TB in video data, say on iTunes. And it's reasonable to want to transfer that from one machine to another over the Internet (e.g., to back it up to a machine somewhere else or in the cloud).

    If ISPs don't want this to happen, they need clear limits and rules, not underhanded complaints and name calling.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Turiko ( 1259966 )
      Actually, this ISP isn't looking for a way to put back draconian limits - the limits were only removed last february IIRC. Before that , i believe it was 80 GB per month. They're using this to show off their service :P
    • They are actually bragging that a customer reached 2.7TB on their slow line saying that even our slow line is good for mega users. Too much North American news made you jump to conclusions a bit.
  • Consumption (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Mr_Silver ( 213637 ) on Saturday August 21, 2010 @05:23AM (#33322632)

    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

    I'd be interested to know how people can consume that much data! Assuming 1080p rips at 11GB a pop lasting 3 hours, you're looking at 251 movies or 754 hours worth of entertainment.

    Assuming you don't work and you don't sleep then there are only 744 hours in the longest month! Assuming you're unemployed and you do sleep, then this puts this down to a "mere" 496 hours and you'd have to be watching them from the moment you wake up to the moment you fall asleep.

    Even in a house of 4 people, that's still each person downloading 54 HD movies a month - how on earth can you watch that much in a month? Or find that many movies worth watching for that matter?

  • by Hadlock ( 143607 ) on Saturday August 21, 2010 @05:24AM (#33322634) Homepage Journal

    This summer there were an astounding number of digital download sales. Each title was originally designed to be packaged and distributed via 8GB DVD. When you're offering 8GB of data that is to be absorbed over a period of days or weeks, people tend to jump up and buy/download it when it only costs $2.50 or so. Couple that with EA's store recently having several $1.99 pricing snafus, and the careful shopper can buy 35GB worth of data for under $10, and feel right in downloading it that very day (who doesn't want to play with their new toys?). That doesn't include any of the 20 three minute 720p videos I watched on youtube this afternoon.
     
    A Terabyte is what, 1000GB? I signed on to steam yesterday on my linux machine (via wine) to message someone about something, walked away and came back to find out that it'd finished downloading all 11GB of Call of Duty 4 and 3GB of Street Fighter 4, in addition to countless updates to other steam games I had installed to test but never play on that machine. Let me put it this way; I accidentally downloaded 15GB of data this afternoon. Didn't phase me a bit. Didn't cost me anything, only downside on my end was maybe a couple extra cents on the electricity bill for running the laptop a couple of hours. Valve pushed out a 64mb patch tonight to fix the fact that all their game characters were wearing birthday hats on the wrong day. My roommate probably downloaded 60gb worth of "HD" netflix movies this afternoon. Data is cheap, practically free after the cost of infrastructure, and the baseline of data being pushed around is growing by the day, because, hey, it's better to have it locally just in case, rather than wait 60 seconds to download it.
     
    No doubt as market saturation begins to plateau, we'll all see large caps (15gb, 20gb) installed, with a couple of neighbors splitting the cost of a pair of bonded T1s to skirt around it.

    • A Terabyte is what, 1000GB?

      No, 1024GB. It's only drive makers and a committee that try to redefine that.

      • by Hadlock ( 143607 )

        I knew I would be corrected, but I wasn't expecting someone to have created an alternate account for specifically correcting people. Kudos to you, good sir.

      • > No, 1024GB.

        No, 1000GB.

        > It's only drive makers and a committee that try to redefine that.

        The prefixes were defined long ago by the BIPM.

        When we started using "kilobyte" to refer to 1024 bytes interchangeably with 1000 bytes we understood that it was an approximation. Same with "megabyte". "kilobyte" has always meant 1000 bytes, "megabyte" has always meant 1000,000 bytes, "gigabyte" has always meant 1000,000,000 bytes, and "terabyte" 1000,000,000,000 bytes. KB, MB, GB, and TB have always been the

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by grumbel ( 592662 )

        No, 1024GB. It's only drive makers and a committee that try to redefine that.

        The 1024 scale is completly stupid. The only area where it makes a little bit of sense is RAM, everything else, HD storage, bandwidth, etc. it is completly meaningless and useless, as size doesn't increase by power of two in those areas.

        Here is a thing: Just because you have grown up with something doesn't make it right or a good solution. All the 1024 scale does is cause lots of unneeded confusion, because it makes calculating between TB, GB, MB, KB extremely hard, instead of completly trivial as it would

  • I could easily saturate my 100mbit line, from Giganews or other usenet source, setting up my own news mirror, mirror a few big download sites, or find some other way to waste bandwidth.

    My theoretical monthly download capacity would be something like 10MB*3600*24*28 = 24TB, and if that's not enough, there are gigabit upgrades available. However, that's not very interesting, since just the storage cost for 24 TB is much much more than I care to pay.

    And, especially, what could I possibly consume that requires those data amounts? Scene-released 720p averages at 7mbit, assuming 1080p averages at 10, and I have to watch 10 simultaneous Full-HD streams around the clock to consume that bandwidth. Who's got the time?

  • just charge per bandwidth. ffs.
    • > just charge per bandwidth.

      Thereby causing the many slashdotters who believe that downloading TBs of unauthorized copies of movies and music at no extra cost is a basic human right to squeal and squall.

  • by Eggplant62 ( 120514 ) on Saturday August 21, 2010 @05:53AM (#33322742)

    It's funny that ISPs can whine and cry over the biggest users of bandwidth but can't be arsed to shut down let alone locate and notify their customers about their malware-infected PCs that are blasting spam all over the net. Start working on that and we might not have to worry about bandwidth caps.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Rather than shut down people who download a lot, they should prepare for people who download a lot.
  • I chose to switch to business class internet service after determining that my usage typically exceeds Comcast's monthly consumer bandwidth cap in a any normal five-day period. I was already paying for a faster connection, but they really wanted to penalize me for using it.

    What's the point of a 25Mbps download speed if it means I just hit a cap that much faster?

    At least for my ISP, business service is about $20/month more expensive, has no caps, restrictions on use, or throttling. If that's the cost to get

  • How much data would the average family pull if they did all of their TV watching via IP and not regular cable/sat/broadcast?

    They are pushing broadband aren't they? And the benefits of high speed access?

    all the best,

    drew

  • Are athletes air hogs? Should we encourage the couch potato lifestyle to reduce air usage and cut down on CO2 emissions?

    ~;-)

    all the best,

    drew

  • If you read the ars technica coverage on this story, that same ISP offers connections up to 100mbps. If 100mb/sec is 12.5 Megabyte/second, and there's 86,400 seconds in a day, that's a little over 1TB a day. So if that customer has the top tier, let the bandwidth go full boar for less than three days, then disconnected it for the rest of the month, he could get just under 3TB. They should put more realistic constraints to their resources. This guy used less than 10% of what was possible (full bandwidth
  • ... TV per day works out to 2.7TB per month. That's using 20Mb/s for high quality, a figure that broadcast TV cannot reach (in USA it is limited to 19.39MB/s ... and the cable/satellite companies are known to ruin the quality by over compressing).

    At Comcast quality (definitely nowhere near high), that works out to about 24 hours a day. And given the choices on Comcast's channel lineup, one clearly must include internet video feeds in nearly all of that.

    IMHO, internet services for year 2015 should be tiere

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