FiOS customer discovers the limits of “unlimited” data: 77TB a month

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/05/fios-customer-discovers-the-limits-of-unlimited-data-77-tb-in-month/

by bane • 13 years ago

33 55 13 years ago

arstechnica.com

georgemcbay3• 13 years ago

I'm usually pretty sympathetic to these stories of people getting screwed on "unlimited" data with, say, 5 gig or whatever caps, but in this case... cry me a river, man.

I'm stuck in an area where my two options are Time Warner Cable, which I refuse to use due to terrible experiences with them in the past, and AT&T DSL (old school DSL, not U-Verse), which works fine but is slow and has 50 gigabyte caps (you can go over the caps but they will bill you for extra usage).

I really wish Google would put more pressure on the US ISP market (maybe partnering with Netflix and others who stand to lose on the current sorry state of ISPs here), because clearly these companies need a lot more pressure put upon them, but 77 terabytes a month is by any measure a huge outlier and I don't fault Verizon for getting involved in this particular case.

johnward• 13 years ago

Comcast cap doesn't seem to be a hard limit, or wasn't in the past. I managed 4tb in a month before they finally kept calling me and telling me I had a "virus". I'm not even sure how you could transfer 77tb in a month.

hcal• 13 years ago

Comcast's cap is moving to metering. When it is implemented in your area you'll get about 300 gigs per month with your plan and they will than charge you $10 for each additional 10gigs. So its not really going to be a cap anymore.

Domenic_S2• 13 years ago

I really wish Google would put more pressure on the US ISP market

You want to know what Google's biggest issue is getting fiber out?

Quote:

In California in particular, environmental regulations prevent companies from improving the telecommunications infrastructure, Medin said.

“Google is a big believer in protecting the environment for future generations, but certain types of state and local environmental rules make investment very difficult,” he explained. ” Laws like the California Environmental Quality Act can make it prohibitively expensive for companies to invest in new projects, such as our fiber project, within California.

“Many fine California city proposals for the Google Fiber project were ultimately passed over in part because of the regulatory complexity here brought about by CEQA and other rules. Other states have equivalent processes in place to protect the environment without causing such harm to business processes, and therefore create incentives for new services to be deployed there instead.”

http://www.forbes.com/sites/eliseackerman/2012/08/04/how-kan...

seehafer• 13 years ago

Lots of things are difficult to accomplish in meat space when you have a one party state governed by career politicians.

georgemcbay3• 13 years ago

I don't doubt that there are overbearing regulations in place in California (and I say this as someone who is pretty liberal and generally in favor of government regulation where it makes sense, but recognizes that they can go overboard), but I don't buy that Google's primary limitation is regulation, because there are many cities outside of California that would bend over backward for Google Fiber and yet they are still rolling it out at what I would consider a snail's pace.

specialp2• 13 years ago

Google is never going to expand nationwide that is not their intent. Right now they cherry picked areas that are not nuts with regulation and have low cost of buildout while having high enough density for a good subscriber base. If the whole country was like that it would be easy.

Google is doing this to get people to complain to their ISP that they are not getting as good a deal as people on Google Fiber. They get into businesses to disrupt things that could potentially hurt their core business but they do not REALLY want to be in that business. A similar thing was when they were going to bid for the 700MHZ frequency auction and managed to get many provisions put in there that were beneficial to them and then did not buy the frequency.

kd0amg• 13 years ago

I'm usually pretty sympathetic to these stories of people getting screwed on "unlimited" data with, say, 5 gig or whatever caps, but in this case... cry me a river, man.

Data caps aside, this is like saturating a quarter-gigabit connection nearly full-time. I can't even get a connection like that at home to begin with.

300bps• 13 years ago

I've had FIOS for 8 years and it is the greatest service I have ever experienced. Currently I pay $74.95 per month for:

1. Prime TV lineup

2. Unlimited landline phone service

3. 75 M/bps downstream and 35 M/bps upstream Internet

Whenever I run a speedtest, the amount I always get more than the speed I'm promised. Typically see a floor of 80 M/bps downsteam and 40 M/bps upstream.

It is rock-solid reliable, my IP address never changes unless I unplug my router for more than a day and it is completely unfiltered Internet - they don't physically stop you from running servers.

I probably transfer 500 GB per month every month and I would consider myself a "heavy user" of bandwidth. As you said, 77 TB of bandwidth in one month is outside of normal use patterns to an insane degree.

specialp2• 13 years ago

I agree with that all as a FIOS customer but one thing that is burning me up is their refusal to CDN with YouTube and Netflix. There are times where YouTube is unusable even with 50Mbit connection. They also are fighting hard in court to have this behavior by filing lawsuits against net neutrality.

The internet is great from them but when the 2 biggest bandwidth sites on the internet are slow it is a big deal. You cannot get HD Netflix from them but they offer a competing service which they CDN with and give you HD which is a conflict of interest.

mikeash6• 13 years ago

And all they did was ask him to switch over to their business plans, so he'd pay $300/month for the ability to transfer 77TB in a month rather than the $200/month he currently pays. No big deal.

To be fair, the guy clearly doesn't think it's a big deal either. From the article: "I don't mind upgrading to business if that's really all the problem is," houkouonchi told me. "It just surprises me they would bother going after people just to get them to pay a little bit more per month."

I've been a FiOS customer for about a year and I still wonder what's going on with it to make it so good. By all rights, nothing sold by Verizon should be this easy, high-quality, and free of problems. Yet here we are.

rayiner3• 13 years ago

I've been a FiOS customer for about a year and I still wonder what's going on with it to make it so good. By all rights, nothing sold by Verizon should be this easy, high-quality, and free of problems. Yet here we are.

What makes it so good is that it is only available in a couple of dozen cities in 16 states (almost all coastal states), within any city focuses on wiring up affluent areas first,[1] is a premium product that starts at $60/month (averaged over 2 years), and is relatively unregulated compared to POTS or cellular.

[1] Check out the FIOS map for Baltimore (within 15 miles of 21217): http://fios.verizon.com/fios-coverage.html. That reverse-S shape is more or less a map of the higher-income corridor of the city. The pinned addresses are generally luxury apartment buildings. Also check out the coverage map of Philadelphia (within 20 miles of 19106). Zoom in note good coverage in Center City, particularly in Rittenhouse Square, no coverage in North Philly, South Philly, or West Philly, but decent coverage in the wealthier western suburbs. Follow Lancaster Ave westward from poor West Philly; note the lack of any coverage until you get to Lower Merion Township, one of the historically wealthy suburbs.

clauretano• 13 years ago

No crying needed, no one is faulting Verizon. From the article, he switched from business connection to FiOS to save some money, and didn't mind switching back to business class after they notified him that a rack of servers in his home violated their ToS.

This article isn't "bah caps" complaining, rather "how did someone use 77TB in a month?" curiosity.

broolstoryco2• 13 years ago

tldr:

residential service
'I have a full rack and run servers'
'Well, that's against our ToS.'
'he said I would need to switch to the business service.'

tseabrooks2• 13 years ago

You forgot the last line: > 'No problem, switch me over. Thanks. Bye'

colechristensen• 13 years ago

houkouonchi has been providing friends and family a personal VPN, video streaming, and peer-to-peer file service—running a rack of seven servers with 209TB of raw storage in his house

BlackDeath3• 13 years ago

So... was this customer under the impression that the data plan was literally unlimited?

angersock• 13 years ago

If they call it unlimited, it damned well ought to be unlimited.

ceejayoz2• 13 years ago

They call it unlimited, but you also have to stick within the TOS, which clearly forbids this sort of use case on a residential contract.

broolstoryco2• 13 years ago

that was not even the real issue. they called to check what was generating all that traffic and he told them that he was running servers - that was against the tos, not the bandwidth he used.

IbJacked• 13 years ago

Exactly. If the bandwidth was being used for non-TOS-breaking activity (maybe he is a particle accelerator hobbyist, or whatever), it sounds like it wouldn't have been a problem. Verizon called to ask what he was doing to use that kind of bandwidth, not calling to say they were going to cancel his service.

Both parties look like the good guys to me. As a bonus, it was interesting to me to read about his setup.

derefr• 13 years ago

Note that this isn't a "getting screwed" story, and the person it happened to isn't complaining that it happened. It's really just a tech-PR piece on how far you have to go to run afoul of these limits. (Look at the paragraphs spent gushing about his setup. Those wouldn't be there if this were rabblerousing.)

codegeek2• 13 years ago

In general, I, like most of us, hate ISPs who advertise "unlimited" data but it really is limited. However, this particular case, the guy used 77TB (jaw dropping) and it probably makes sense for Verizon to step in.

Now. going back to the unlimited thing. I really want some kind of govt control here and make it unlawful for these companies to advertise "unlimited" because lets face it, it never is. There is always a "cap" or "Throttle" (EDIT). So instead of advertising as "unlimited", why not say "Use as much as you want upto xyz GB". Yes this does not sound nice for marketing but honestly, claiming unlimited with a fine print is really getting old and boring.

jdhzzz• 13 years ago

Is unlimited, but throttled, still unlimited? If so my $30/mo. phone plan is unlimited. I'm not sure it is capped at all. It may drop to 1200 baud, but won't ever run out.

codegeek2• 13 years ago

You know what I mean. yes we the HN crowd know all about throttling and stuff. What about the average Joe who sees the TV ad for "Unlimited data" and goes "wow I can watch youtube all day".

For example, I have an "unlimited" data plan from TMobile. But they try to explain it to me like this "After 2GB usage, you will lose the 4G speed and it will be very slow". They even send me text messages with this crap once I reach a certain "limit" on my "unlimited" plan. It cracks me up.

maratd• 13 years ago

Yes this does not sound nice for marketing but honestly

It's not a matter of sounding nice. The average person has no idea what a gigabyte is. But they know what unlimited means.

Figure out how to explain what a gigabyte is to the average person and I'll get behind your proposal. Otherwise, I'll just read the fine print or search on the net as to what "unlimited" means for that specific plan and company.

mikeash6• 13 years ago

This didn't come down to "unlimited" not being unlimited, though. It came down to him running servers off a plan where that was not allowed, and all they want him to do is pay about 50% more for a plan where it is allowed.

I'm not sure how I feel about ISPs trying to regulate what you do with your connection, rather than just how much, but it's at least a different question from the one of "unlimited".

larrys• 13 years ago

"In general, I, like most of us, hate ISPs who advertise "unlimited" data"

It's unlimited which does not mean there aren't limitations. For example an "all you can eat" buffet means all you can eat in one visit and also means you can't expect to take home what you don't eat. Likewise unlimited would typically come with some restrictions and expectation that you aren't watching movies 24x7 but more like a normal person might (call it 12 hours x 30 days?).

"So instead of advertising as "unlimited", why not say "Use as much as you want upto xyz GB". "

Well for one thing most end users wouldn't have an idea of what that means. So right there that would be a fail in the brains of most normals. How many people can translate "x" gb or tb into something that means "I can watch 10 movies a night". So I guess that is the answer but then again they actually might not even realize how much bandwidth email takes or visits to the amazon store. Hence "unlimited" is much easier.

By the way at the 7-11 they don't say "you can have 10 ketchup packs" because then everyone might take 10 ketchup packs because it says they can. Leaving the ketchup and allowing people to take what they feel is right typically results in less usage overall.

jlarocco• 13 years ago

IMO this actually makes Verizon look pretty nice as an ISP.

If this guy was only told to upgrade to business after running a rack of servers and averaging 50 TB a month, then I'd think almost any "normal" usage would be fine.

jffry• 13 years ago

I used to have Verizon FIOS, before moving away to somewhere without FIOS. I was on a 25 Mbit symmetric plan, but almost always got 35/35.

mikeash6• 13 years ago

They're amazingly good in my experience. Their techs are friendly and show up on time. There are rarely problems. In the one case I did have a problem, I got through to a support person quickly, and the first person who picked up the phone understood exactly what I was talking about when I told them that their router was failing to obtain a DHCP lease, and cheerfully skipped over all the "please reboot your PC" nonsense and went straight to resetting the piece of equipment that was actually causing the problem.

izzydata• 13 years ago

Houkounchi is a friend of mine. Interesting to see this story show up here almost a year late.

http://whatpulse.org/stats/bandwidth/

TrainedMonkey• 13 years ago

Pretty cool, especially when you consider that in a month of march there are 2,678,400 seconds and 77TB is ~ 77,000,000 MB. So he sustained on average throughput of 28.75 megabytes a second for the entire month.

Another interesting titbit from the article is Verizon engineer claiming the OP used 30,000% of average Verizon user. Simple calculation shows that average Verizon user uses a little over 255 Gigabytes per household per month (I assume this is combined bandwidth).

tseabrooks2• 13 years ago

I like that he is totally cool with switching back to business class. He is just confused that they're freaking out over the extra 50$ a month. That 50$ a month isn't covering the difference between himself and the average consumer class customer.

jotm• 13 years ago

Haha, 77 TB on a residential plan. I mean, come on, I understand 500GB, maybe 1 TB (I personally never used more than 250GB in a month), but this is ridiculous. I'm surprised Verizon didn't shut him down way earlier...

dictum• 13 years ago

500GB or 1TB is a quite low bar for "unlimited", especially given FiOS speeds.

(Not that 77TB isn't an insane amount for a customer, but the point is: the fact that most people don't use their connection to its full potential doesn't mean nobody should.)

mikeash6• 13 years ago

500GB would be completely ridiculous. On the 300Mbps plan this guy has, you could go through that in less than four hours.

MAGZine• 13 years ago

Throw in a couple 50GB game downloads, some TV, some music, file downloads and you'll easily break 250GB. Netflix HD will chew throw bandwidth pretty fast, especially if you have a couple people in the house watching at the same time.

... And game will only get larger, bitrates will only go up.

zurn• 13 years ago

Netflix's HD is 3.8-5 Mbps, compared to Blu-Ray's 30-40 Mbps. Lots of things "want" a lot more bandwidth than they're currently getting by with, even services that seem very bandwidth hungry now.

callahad• 13 years ago

Once you have a symmetric fiber connection, it becomes surprisingly easy to find ways to fill that pipe. For instance, it's suddenly feasible to to fully mirror all of your local storage to multiple online services, or to run an OpenVPN endpoint for personal use and send all of your traffic through it when out and about.

hyborg787• 13 years ago

Article is from May 2013 FYI, currently not reflected in the title with a (2013).

btgeekboy• 13 years ago

I wonder if he's the reason I can get a full 50+mbps on a Verizon bandwidth test, but I get roughly 5-10mbps to basically anywhere else on the internet. (Even the Linux mirrors, like mirrors.kernel.org and mirror.anl.gov, where I used to be able to fill my connection with no problem, are now around 500KB/sec.) Get more bandwidth please, VZ.

joshbaptiste• 13 years ago

Previous Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5758585

United857• 13 years ago

To give some perspective to how hard it is for any consumer usage to reach this amount, assume one was streaming Blu-ray quality video 24/7 for the whole month:

(3600s/h)(24h/d)(31d/m)*(7MB/s) = still only about 18 TB.

FiOS customer discovers the limits of “unlimited” data: 77TB a month

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