ISP Bandwidth Caps are Really Rate Hikes

http://www.cringely.com/2011/07/bandwidth-caps-are-rate-hikes/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ICringely+%28I%2C+Cringely%29

by Deprecated • 15 years ago

68 43 15 years ago

cringely.com

zheng• 15 years ago

Thanks for those normalized graphs. Really gives a striking visual rebuttal to ISP's baseless claims.

wmf4• 15 years ago

Cringely doesn't mention ISPs' claims that they will increase the caps every year. I'm willing to wait for them to renege before breaking out the torches and pitchforks.

ericd• 15 years ago

And if they reneg, are you going to be able to get enough pitchforks to make a difference?

wmf4• 15 years ago

No, which is why Cringely's rant is pointless.

Bud• 15 years ago

He doesn't mention them because they are laughable.

MrVitaliy3• 15 years ago

The default 2Gb wireless internet cap from Verizon is pathetic.

It is even more pathetic with their 4G network advertisement. All it takes is 1(maybe 2) HD movies from Netflix to hit a monthly cap.

Ronkdar• 15 years ago

the 2-5 GB caps are for wireless networks, aka 3G. How often do you download HD movies onto your phone? In the very next sentence it mentions 250 GB for desktop connections.

MrVitaliy3• 15 years ago

Netflix client has been out on Android phone OS for awhile and is quite popular.

http://www.verizonwireless.com/b2c/mobilebroadband/?page=pla...

Default data plan for smart phone is $30/mo, capped at 2Gb/mo, on a 4G network.

Their maximum cap is 10Gb/mo for an outrageous price of $80/mo.

It is evident that the whole point of 4G network for Verizon is to bring their customer to the monthly cap at a blazing speed and start over-charging them by $10/Gb as soon as they can.

dmbass• 15 years ago

The point is that today we don't hit the caps, but metaphorical-tomorrow, we will hit them and it will be too late to change the precedents set today.

ronnier2• 15 years ago

I watch HD streams using the Justin.tv app all the time, although I'm grandfathered in on a unlimited plan.

jm4• 15 years ago

Just playing devil's advocate here... Is the wireless cap really a bad thing? I have a 2GB cap right now. I still stream music, surf and watch the occasional YouTube video. I haven't gotten close to the cap yet. I pay about as much as I did for "unlimited" and the biggest impact is that I now keep track of how much data I'm using. Yeah, it's annoying. It's easier to have unlimited and not have to think about it. But I also don't want a wireless internet experience that's as slow as molasses because everyone is walking around streaming Netflix day and night or some cheapskate has decided to use his smartphone as his home internet connection. I can deal with caps as long as they are reasonable and periodically adjusted to account for increasing demands of mobile apps and sites.

alex_c• 15 years ago

>But I also don't want a wireless internet experience that's as slow as molasses because everyone is walking around streaming Netflix day and night or some cheapskate has decided to use his smartphone as his home internet connection.

Do you have any evidence of how common this behavior is or what impact it actually has on the network?

ISPs claim that the vast majority of their users won't be affected by data caps, but they also claim that heavy users significantly degrade performance for everyone. Those two statements usually seem contradictory to me.

baddox5• 15 years ago

I don't understand why ISPs aren't offering some benefit to their users when they introduce these transfer caps. Why not add caps to the lower plans and lower the price as well? If it's true that the vast majority of users don't get anywhere near the caps, then this would be beneficial to most users.

For heavier users, offer a plan with no cap (or, say, a cap 10x larger) and higher speed, and charge more for it. I think power users would be much more accepting of a price increase along with higher speeds than a simple addition of caps to all plans with no price change.

rexf• 15 years ago

In the US, cable companies are often monopolies in providing broadband internet. They get away with offering mediocre product and poor service simply because there are no alternatives.

I've had the backwards situation where it was cheaper to buy basic cable TV + cable internet than stand alone cable internet.

It would be foolish of them to offer a cheaper, limited cable internet plan when they can make everybody pay more for their standard, unlimited (that is not unlimited) plan.

baddox5• 15 years ago

From my small town of 10,000 people, to my college town with 100,000, to my current home in San Francisco, there has always been at least two broadband providers: usually the local cable company and AT&T DSL. Perhaps this isn't the norm, or perhaps two companies with completely separate local infrastructures isn't enough competition.

michaelbuckbee• 15 years ago

This is substantially what AT&T has done for the iPhone data plans.

200MB - $15/month 2GB - $25/month

Albeit without the higher speeds.

MikeCapone• 15 years ago

As a Canadian who went through the debate here, I can say that caps and rate hikes aren't the same thing. The psychological impact on the average internet user is very different, and so online behaviour will be impacted in a different way.

Paying 40$ a month instead of 30$ for an unlimited or very high amount of data means you'll grumble a bit, but you'll still do whatever you did before.

Going from a very high cap or unlimited to a very low cap + expensive additional data means you'll very probably try to restrict your data transfers and do whatever you can not to exceed your cap.

You don't have a sunken cost like with a normal rate hike..

baddox5• 15 years ago

What's surprising to me is that, at least with Comcast, there's simply no way to get the cap-free service I had before. I don't have the option to pay more to remove the cap (other than paying per gigabyte over the cap, which is silly).

wmf4• 15 years ago

Business service?

sgrossman• 15 years ago

While I don't argue with the title of the article - bandwidth caps really are just a way to deal with infrastructure costs by passing it on to some consumers - the use of IP transit as a reference for an ISPs cost of service is inaccurate.

IP transit costs are what a carrier or ISP would pay to get traffic from their main datacenter/CO in a given metro area to the Internet. This is an operating expense and is a drop in the bucket compared to CapEx they spend on the last mile.

The cable operators and mobile carriers are freaking out because they are constantly pouring money into nodes splits and QAM carriers(cable) or radios, backhaul, and spectrum(mobile). These are the real money pits of their businesses and their motivation to enforce data transfer caps, throttling, etc.

joelhaus2• 15 years ago

Does anyone feel that the new white space standard (up to 22Mbps over 12,000 sq mi; 802.22) could be a game changer?

Original article was posted here yesterday: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2814917

Cross-posting my question from this thread:

Is this spectrum encumbered by any regulations that would prevent an enterprising individual from leasing some land near a backbone connection and setting up a startup ISP?

Would LOVE to see the regional cable monopolies face real competition. 22Mbps is about 30% more downstream and 4000% more upstream speed than I get from Time Warner Cable in NYC.

wmf4• 15 years ago

22 Mbps shared by hundreds or thousands of customers is much worse than cable or DSL. You can already do ~100 Mbps at decent range in 2.4 GHz using Ubiquiti or similar equipment; there are dozens of WISPs doing this and if they're lucky they barely break even.

joelhaus2• 15 years ago

Thanks Wes - If I understand correctly, it's the density of end-points within range that would determine whether the economics are favorable.

Wondering then, what is the use case for this new standard? Only very rural areas?

noonespecial• 15 years ago

I wish it was just a rate hike. Instead, you are often simply cut off with no recourse for exceeding the cap. You can't pay more and get more.

If you're not granny checking her email and facebook, you're not welcome here.

I think its more about quietly but forcefully sending the message that your internet is not for tv.

ISP Bandwidth Caps are Really Rate Hikes

Related Stories