Comments on: Broadband Caps: Maybe It’s Not Just About TV

By: JJ

JJ — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 16:42:18 +0000

I think it is interesting if instead of taking this one, single event you go back 15 years and look at the time line from the Telecom Act of 1996 that was good for consumers and competition (some of it captured well in “Broadband Bandits”) until today. The incumbents and cable companies single unifying effort was to accomplish the watering down of the 1996 act, which they succeeded in doing from 2000 through 2009 and focusing their local lobbying efforts at the state level for disarming the state regulatory commissions. Using ATT as an example, one of their prime arguments for deregulation (which when translated means regulation for competition) was that if they didn’t have to share their network built on a monopoly, they could invest in fiber and build out of a broadband network. Once they accomplished the neutering of the URC’s, their broadband network was built for the main purpose of delivering television; copper become sufficient for delivering the speeds THEY needed for delivery and fiber to the home is no longer in their plans. Now all of a sudden it is an outrage that ATT is implementing caps to their ISP business? We made our bed and now we have to lie in it.

By: Scott from Aus

Scott from Aus — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 05:11:35 +0000

You should all look at the way ISP’s in Australia work. We have had download limits, ever since we had internet. And we are only just getting some decent limits now.

I think its basically because bandwidth to overseas cost to much for ISPs not to have limits.

There are many different ways it can be done.

Most plans are capped and only count downloads. So streaming content is not an issue. There are some plans where uploads are included, and downloads from some providers are free.

They also have peak and off-peak limits.
And shaped plans, which basically means if you go over your limit, they reduce your bandwidth for the rest of the month and don’t charge you overuse fees.

However, ISPs that charge overuse fees, normally charge it at a ridiculous rate. Such as $2 p/Mb and have a limit of how much can be charged.

Anyway, its a system that promotes competition. But in the end the consumer has to be careful or they have a massive bill to pay.

By: Fanfoot

Fanfoot — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 04:21:09 +0000

Assume we ARE talking about cord cutting, of the TV variety. I cancel my Comcast cable TV service and replace it with a variety of Over The Top services. In HD. Even at 720p 24fps the offerings on XBox, Apple TV and Vudu run about 5-6Mbps. And Vudu has an even higher bandwidth offering. At 5Mbps watching about 4 hours per day you’d run through 250GB in about a month. Ignoring the fact that the average american home has multiple sets. And ignoring any other uses for the internet. Even 250GB makes it difficult to replace your existing pay TV service with something over the internet if you consider HD a requirement. Imagine a future with 1080i (x4) videos and it will start looking really really limited.

By: Chris W

Chris W — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 14:59:44 +0000

Uhm, not that I agree with caps but… You need to learn the proper meaning of words. What you are calling an issue of congestion is INDEED bandwidth issues. Bandwidth is NOT the quantity of data you are allowed to transfer. Bandwidth IS how quickly data can be transferred. To this end, it is likely that none of our US broadband providers have enough BANDWIDTH to provide all their customers with enough BANDWIDTH to meet their stated service level offering. That’s why we have all of this “UP TO xMB/s” business. Every broadband provider over-sells. The major issue is how much.

We get caps primarily get caps because providers want to. They don’t want to spend the extra money in upgrading high usage areas.

By: Chubbysumo

Chubbysumo — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 14:46:28 +0000

Yea, as it stands now, with 3 people, and 3 netflix accounts, and no TV service, we go thru 1TB on average per month on charter. I have never gotten a warning, but I am on the ultra 60, and the theoretical download limit per month is over 19TB. I have received a call once, when we hit 4 TB, and was just told to curtail it a little bit. What I pay now is only a few dollars under a business line, and its not reasonable for them to threaten moving me to a business line, as I have considered it already.

By: Tanshin

Tanshin — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 14:04:45 +0000

I think you really said it when you said that it will limit innovation. In my spare time I’ve been experimenting with some relatively high bandwidth operations, namely streaming music for people. There was a time I was streaming to around 13-16 people for several hours which uses up most of my upstream bandwidth and 1-2GB an hour. Once caps come about am I not going to be able to have the opportunity to try things like this for fear of getting charged? Are we going to have to revert to physical media as programs get larger and larger and are more commonly downloaded than boxed?

And to top it off, AT&T is pouring billions of dollars into their wireless services and is leaving those of us with U-Verse stifling. I live in an outdated community with rotten copper. We could totally benefit from fiber. Do they want to innovate and lay fiber? No. They’ve even made statements that they plan to abuse the copper for a long time. It’s stupid! And now people are saying that AT&T now has the ability to upgrade people from DSL to U-Verse by force and as they see fit. So now we’re just going to cram more people onto a service that’s already outdated and somewhat unstable? Makes perfect sense.

By: Jim

Jim — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 12:52:16 +0000

Caps are just for money, go to http://www.stopthecap.com , the carriers do not lack for bandwidth. They are going to train us to pay for bandwidth by the caps and the prices will go through the roof. In most markets there is no competition for broadband. For some “strange” reason where there IS competition, the prices are lower. (a LOT lower) Most European countries put the US to shame in terms of pricing and access to Broadband.

By: Dragan Ong

Dragan Ong — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 12:44:22 +0000

Of course, according to Mr. Glass who is an WISP interested in providing as little service as possible to paying customers, not having cars at all would be just fine. Nothing wrong w/ donkeys.

By: Rekrul

Rekrul — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 12:09:23 +0000

It’s not about bandwidth. Congestion is caused by too many people online at the same time, transferring data at too high a speed, not their total monthly usage. If this was about bandwidth, then AT&T wouldn’t allow users to go over the cap by just paying more. If these ISPs were really running out of bandwidth as they claim, they’d be LOWERING the speeds they offer, not raising them. Higher speeds = more usage. Of course, none of them are willing to give up the higher fees they charge for faster accounts.

If American markets had any real competition, they’d never be able to get away with this.

By: Duskrider

Duskrider — Sat, 19 Mar 2011 17:45:57 +0000

My issue is really that the cable companies are just trying to protect an old market, from the “fat and happy” days.

Here in Canada there has been much lobbying for tiered pricing, although our government has stepped in and prevented this, for now.

The reason that bothers me so much is because our cable companies had a far superior opportunity than Netflix and such to offer even better services, but instead of competing they went to the government for help. With their existing content relationships, our Cable companies could have offered a Netflix type service on steroids. I would have happily traded my basic cable package fees for this type of service to get the “what I want to watch, when I want to watch it” aspects that we all so enjoy from Netflix/Apple TV, etc. I would probably have been willing to pay even more for this. Instead, they try to protect their old model.

So, I have abandoned cable altogether, worked out my over the air HD and buy my TV shows through Apple and Netflix.

Sucks to be them.