40GB cap coming to your ISP/town?

[Jason1478963]

I wondered over to www.tomshardware.com today and found a rather profound idea TimeWarner is looking to implement. I know I will be switching if they move on this idea. I hate to see this become an acceptable trend. I may switch for even suggesting such an idiotic idea. Broadband internet is not gonna be worth the money with such a low CAP.

Info from tomshardware
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/tim...-cap,7466.html

Petition found in the comments of article found above
http://www.petitiononline.com/UHSICP01/petition.html

[Brucifer]

More of the overly greedy jerks in the business world that will end up shooting themselves in the foot. I got along just fine in this world for years and years before the internet came along. Could get along just fine without it too as it would save me a bunch of money. No more putting computers together, no ISP's, no having to run out in the middle of the night to try and find a part to keep a cruncher going. Yep, would save me a bundle. Would also get me off my butt and back outside doing other stuff with my time and getting more exercise and all that. There's always books to read, trails to hike, paths to walk, bikes to ride, just lots of stuff. All it would take anyway is for everyone to just turn their stuff off and cancel their accounts and those 40gb ISP's would be out of business in a hurry.

[Nflight]

I doubt this would ever happen, relax everyone!

[Jason1478963]

It will be happening in 4 cities according to the article. It is also implemented in other countries. It will happen here if there are to many people that relax and don't worry about it.

[Brucifer]

There are people that only use the internet for their email. And they could maybe get by, but unfortunately email is totally choked up nowdays with tons of videos, huge pictures, ads, spam, etc. So even 40gb for the folks that only use their email would be a stretch.

I think what they will find is that people will just move on to another ISP. I don't think it would become a widespread thing, but then you just don't know anymore. Look at what happened when the gas prices went up towards the $5 bucks a gallon. People really started backing off their driving. Prices on other stuff increased due to shipping. It was a downer on the business world. The high prices and selling lots of stuff only works if the masses have the money to spend on purchasing that item. Joe Sixpack doesn't have the disposable bucks that he used to have (nor does Marsha Sixpack). His wages have not been keeping pace with inflation. One of these days the bottom will fall out of it all because we will be a nation of burger flippers, but no one will have the bucks to purchase burgers.

There's only so much that the public will pay for something before they will turn elsewhere. There's only a few things in life that people have to have, like toilet paper and ketchup... :-) Navy ships won't go to sea without toilet paper and ketchup. 40GB internet service just isn't in that category.

[liuqyn]

Personally, I would love 40GB a month cable/DSL service, I pay nearly double for 400MB a day(~12GB a month) satellite service, as that is my only option where I live. and if I go over it gets throttled to BAD dial-up speed for the next 24 hours.

only upside is I get free bandwidth from 2-7am.

[Steve Lux]

Things that make you go Hmm.....

Top of post: "I doubt this would ever happen, relax everyone!"

Bottom of post: "Challenge me, or correct me, but don't ask me to die quietly."

[Danish Dynamite]

in australia it is more common to have capped plans then uncapped (unlimited)

example for broadband from optus and bigpond and just to make things a bit more interesting you get a data allowance (ie uploads and downloads = data allowance) not a download limit

i am currently with optus fusion plan i get 20 gb downloads and if i go, over the first 2gb are changed at 15 cent per mb then i will be speed limited to 64kbps till the end of the billing cycle

[vaughan]

I'm on Optus Yes Power. It has 20GB peak (noon to midnight) and 40GB off-peak (midnight to noon). Only download traffic is supposed to be counted in the calculations but I suspect they might "cheat" a little on this. There is no way the consumer can check on the ISP. Also, near the end of the calendar month the usage stats can jump wildly eg I have been caught out where I'm at say 98% peak usage and physically turn off the cable modem. After midnight (so now its off-peak) I switch back on and discover that I've been throttled to 64kbps as I have exceeded my peak usage. [They throttle to 64kbps if either peak or offpeak exceeds the limit]. Now this is impossible as I had no usage occurring. Hence the reason I say they "cheat" a little.

My son is with iiNet ADSL2+. He has 25GB peak and 40GB off-peak (I think this is 3am to 9am) with only downloads counted in the total. They only throttle the component where you exceed (ie, if he exceeds 25GB in peak then his offpeak is still at 20Mbps until he exceeds 40GB). He also has VOIP which he has never used but it gave him a better d/l allowance to pay the extra $10 a month. He always exceeds his 25/40 every month gotta love those torrents hey.

His ISP is very good as the plan started at 20/40 and they increased the peak to 25 free of charge. They also host quite a bit of data on their servers and these d/l are not counted in the limits.

[Jason1478963]

It would be hard to verify the traffic for peak and off peak. I wonder about unwanted traffic that seems to be passing the modem but stops at the router. I imagine this would get counted as well. I recently upgrade the firmware on my linksys wrt54g to dd-wrt firmware to extend its life. I was pleasantly surprised to find better speed tests and downloads speeds along with the many extras. It does give me history on WAN usage which could be very nice for indication on how bandwidth caps would affect your internet.