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Bandwidth caps could lead to ISPs benefiting from piracy

arstechnica.com — As Time Warner begins experimenting with bandwidth caps, which are commonplace in other countries, the possibility now exists that ISPs will benefit financially from their customers burning through their monthly limits to keep grabbing P2P content.

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  • RGSPro, on 07/04/2008, -7/+91Or users just switching to non-capped ISPs...
    • DCJoeDogaswell, on 07/04/2008, -7/+3*****, you said exactly what I was gonna say

      What's keeping them from just switching to a non-capped ISP (other than a monopoly in a certain region)
    • xXShadowstormXx, on 07/05/2008, -0/+39It's not that easy. MANY, many cities (especially more pronounced in heavily populated ones) have only one or two major ISPs, leaving you stuck with ***** service as competition stagnates.
      • RoshanK, on 07/05/2008, -0/+2like houston for example, were comcrap is the only option for cable, at&t for dsl, and verizon FiOS seems so far away.
    • andreusboy, on 07/05/2008, -0/+36I would like to know where is this magical dreamworld people keep speaking about where they can switch ISPs when they don't like their service.
    • umbrellainabin, on 07/05/2008, -1/+3***** YEAH
    • macmichael01, on 07/05/2008, -0/+9yah but when there is only one ISP in your area your are pretty much stuck so what is the alternate solution. I wished satellite internet was more mainstream and affordable . I bet there would be a huge market for it. Why invest in laying all of these lines on earth when transferring through the air is cheaper and you only need to maintain a satellite.
      • antdude, on 07/05/2008, -0/+1And fast. But satellite services have caps too!
      • ajsween, on 07/05/2008, -0/+2Its called latencies... minimum latency even for a highly streamlined satellite system will always be higher than acceptable. Satellite is great for downloading, but any time you want to play a game, talk on the phone, or quickly retrieve website after website you end up with serious latency issues considering that each direction on a link introduces a minimum of 300ms on top of normal latency involved with land lines.
      • JKVM, on 07/05/2008, -0/+1Most current satellite internet systems have draconian bandwidth limits. Hughes, for instance, caps you after 300MB in 1 day down to an unusably slow speed.
    • antdude, on 07/05/2008, -1/+2We won't have any ISPs left if alternatives exist.
    • Risingashes, on 07/05/2008, -2/+10We have caps down here in Australia.

      As soon as one company put them in everyone had them within 2 months. There is no 'switching'. Once they were put in the only time that they are upgraded is when one of the major companies becomes financially threatened. As soon as they can they put up more restrictions under the guise of 'improvements to service'. Our new plans count uploads as well as downloads- only 1 company is left that only counts downloads.

      Many people have no idea what a megabyte is, others only use email, many households have their main bandwidth users as children, others simply can't choose another company due to infrastructure.

      The people who know why restrictions are bad for them are in the minority and companies are happy to lose them- it's the end times for American internet.

      Looks like Europe and Asia will move even further ahead, this is what happens when politicians are able to be openly corrupt- in Australia we have the excuse of being a sparsely populated island 1/3 of the globe away from civilisation.
      • Murdats, on 07/05/2008, -0/+3there is only 1 company that doesnt count downloads? are you sure you live in australia, I can count the number of ISP's on one hand that count uploads, its almost non existent because implementing it will sink most ISP's
      • jakem1, on 07/05/2008, -0/+2@Murdats: The fact is that there are no decent ISPs in Australia. They all charge through the roof and offer dreadfully slow, capped services. I recently tried to find a new ISP for my mother and was shocked at the lack of choice and the limitations that are imposed in Australia.

        I've also noticed that the internet doesn't really seem to have taken off in Australia and this is probably caused by the terrible service on offer from ISPs. Here in the UK you can do almost anything you need to on the internet including shop for anything you want. Visit the websites of some of Australia's largest companies and it's like a bad joke. Most don't sell anything online and their catalogues are an electronic reproduction of their paper catalogues. You even have to turn the pages just to make sure that there's no confusion. It would be sad if it wasn't so funny.

        I'm not sure what the solution is to all of this but someone needs to intervene pretty quickly. Perhaps Telstra should have control of the phone network taken off them to free up access.
      • dbr_onix, on 07/05/2008, -0/+1> The fact is that there are no decent ISPs in Australia

        Not true. I was in Australia (Adelaide) for a year and the ISP's weren't nearly as awful as I was led to believe.

        I ended up with Adam Internet, and a 60GB plan, which gave.. 60GB regular "external" downloads, 60GB upload, 60GB of "local data" to a set of "peering-resources" (File mirrors, game servers), 10GB of newsgroup quota (although the data also gets used from the external-downloads "quota bin"). If you went over the download/upload/local "bins" you got shaped to 64kbs, which is kind of annoying, but infinitely better than additional charges. It cost $99 a month, and there was also an 80GB/month plan, which was another ~$10 I think

        Also they have setup a system called "Community Net" where-by you can transfer completely unmetered data between people on the same exchange. It's a great idea (it costs them nearly nothing to run, and it stops people using all their bandwidth downloading the same stuff, and it's good for customers, as they can download theoretically infinite amounts of.. linux ISOs), the only problem is that not many people know about it, so there's very few people that use it (apart from a few exchanges)

        Oh, and it was ADSL2+, and was actually faster than my (albeit unmetered) connection in the UK (with BT), and a lot of places can get ADSL2+ from what I saw.

        There are a few companies that offer 1mbit/s down, but unmetered connections, and one or two that offer quotas over 80GB (TPG Internet have a 100GB plan). Had I not went with Adam Internet, I probably would have went with Internode, as TPG didn't have the ADSL2+ equipment in my exchange..

        Really, it's not that bad. Australia is a long way from America where a lot of the data is transmitted from, that's why it's still fairly expensive. I really don't think unlimited quotas are going to start appearing in Australia for many many years. What I would like to see happen is things like the Community Net, but on all ISP's, and maybe even across the entire country. The international pipelines are the biggest problem, transferring data between exchanges and cities isn't nearly as expensive..
        And yeh, there are some areas where you'll be stuck with dial-up, but the same goes for pretty much every country..

        Also, the good thing ab out caps is ISP's are less likely to throttle connections as much. In Australia (on both Adam Internet and the much-hated Telstra BigPond) torrents regularly transfered at the max line speed (about 600-800KB/s usually, as I was fairly far from the exchange), as did newsgroup downloads. With my "unlimited" British Telecom connection, the provided newsgroup connection is capped at about 120KB/s, torrents rarely get over 100KB/s. It's less latent as the UK is closer to America, but that's about all that was better..
    • daridave, on 07/05/2008, -0/+2Indeed, that's what I want to do. Since the cap, all I've really been limited in doing is remote desktop from work to home and vice versa, which really sucks. I also don't see why I should be limited visiting sites like Youtube or getting videos for my iPod, but some fags out there thought it made sense, so I'm stuck feeling like it's 1998 instead of 2008 !

      What REALLY pisses me off is I am absolutely convinced whoever decided this "down there" probably enjoys the same activities we do, such as online streaming and podcasts, but they assume everybody's a criminal, so they cap us... all the while (and I would bet it) their kids are on limewire as we speak, downloading.

      But, of course, they're encouraging AJAX requests, which require less bandwidth when used adequately. Web 2.0, baby! /sarcasm (!!!)
      • D14BL0, on 07/05/2008, -0/+2Those guys "down there" DO love internet stuff as much as we do. They also enjoy their obnoxiously large paychecks, too.
    • D14BL0, on 07/05/2008, -1/+3I'd like to agree with you on this one, but you have to realize that once some ISP begins making a profit from it, others will immediately follow suit. The ones that don't are too to afford to risk it, and their service will not be worth it.

      In the end, most people would rather pay more, for a capped bandwidth, so long as they have better service.
    • chrisvc86, on 07/05/2008, -0/+3Like people already said, they don't really have a choice when it comes to internet and have to rely on the big nationwide companies, and those companies are going to offer similar services to their competitors. It's in all the companies' interests to offer reduced services to the consumer, as long as all the companies go along with it, which it seems they are.

      Until the new internet technologies come around, these companies are going to ***** us with caps, shaping and other things because we have no choice. It's not technically a monopoly because it's not one single company, but really it's a monopoly on the technology because usually one or two companies own the lines in a single area.

      This is one area where the Free Market has failed America.
    • my10cent, on 07/05/2008, -0/+0yeah if they have a ISP to witch to, in this area there is only ONE
  • tlacroix, on 07/04/2008, -5/+9Well, empirically, capped ISP's will have an edge on non-capped ISP's, as they will make more profit, and have less P2P using customers, as they will migrate to non-capped ISP's. Thus, I see the non-capped prices rising, the non P2P users switching to capped, the P2P users switching to non-capped. But that's just the Michael Moore in me talking ;-)
    • Naieve, on 07/05/2008, -0/+2Don't forget people who download movies through places like Amazon, Blockbuster, etc... Game download sites like Direct2drive, Steam, etc...

      TV online?

      You like watching Youtube videos?

      Hope its not too many.
  • , on 07/04/2008, -0/+0I think the bigger issue with these caps is that ISPs are also providing you TV and phone service. It's a serious conflict of interest. As saturation of these networks gets large enough, the ISPs will see fewer profits from pay TV and phone service. They'll end up doing more aggressive caps or increasing connection costs.
  • vsujohn2, on 07/04/2008, -0/+29Thats the same ***** that cell phone companies do. Go over just a few minutes on your plan and poof you've got a huge ass cell phone bill!
    • raytibbitts, on 07/05/2008, -1/+2As if they aren't already profitting from piracy.
    • cjtannu, on 07/07/2008, -0/+1Also the Cell companies are capping even when they call it unlimited. Ex: Sprints simply everything plan with supposed unlimited bandwidth caps at 5GB...pisses me off
  • chrisvc86, on 07/05/2008, -2/+8The wireless revolution couldn't come fast enough. When wireless techs like WiMAX and LTD become widely available hopefully we won't be held hostage by the few companies that own the lines in the ground.

    But really these are the early attempts for the big media companies to start enacting their non neutral internet, as only the companies that have enough money will allow their content to be in certain free zones, that dont count towards your monthly cap.
    • JamesBrown, on 07/05/2008, -0/+7yeah great. Instead of AT&T or Verizon DSL, we can use AT&T or Verizon wireless broadband. Thank god for competition
      • chaosblade77, on 07/05/2008, -0/+0Verizon FiOS from what I've read sounds like a savior for US internet, offering 15mbps at reasonable rates (less than 5mbps cable internet costs here). AT&T tends to side more with the cable companies though. Even though they offer DSL, they also plan on using bandwidth caps. What the hell?
      • chrisvc86, on 07/05/2008, -0/+2The current wireless companies might have the head start on other companies, but at least with wireless a local company can build their own antenna stations and offer equal or better service at reasonable prices. That might not ever actually occur, but with wireless the infrastructure prices reduce considerably, and increases the chance of other companies becoming viable information solutions.
  • smurf22, on 07/05/2008, -0/+15If we pay for 256k per second we should get that year round, not just for as long as we use it.
  • Nev9, on 07/05/2008, -2/+34***** the RIAA!
    • CCUboogernjit, on 07/05/2008, -6/+1Lets try something different for a change : Why dont we all ***** Nev9 instead of the RIAA

      Now THAT is change we can believe in!
    • sanriver12, on 07/06/2008, -0/+1wow you are the che guevara of our time
  • blueracer122, on 07/05/2008, -0/+10Yeah my ISP shut me down for a day just last week because I used up too much bandwidth. They said it looked like I had a virus or some crap like that. It ended with them putting a throttle limit on me and ruining all my fun lol.
  • sylvok, on 07/05/2008, -1/+13***** this *****, this was the last straw. I'm moving to Sweden!
    • D14BL0, on 07/05/2008, -1/+3There must not have been a whole lot of straws then, huh?
    • blitz718, on 07/05/2008, -3/+0I'm right behind you, seriously.
    • CCUboogernjit, on 07/05/2008, -7/+0YES! Two less annoying ungrateful American diggers to make the rest of us Americans look like idiots!

      God Bless America!
      Happy Fourth of July!
      • arsenyv, on 07/06/2008, -0/+1I wish I could digg you down twice. :)
    • shawnanigans, on 07/05/2008, -0/+6Sweden: the land of ridiculously hot women and fast internet. And 81% of the population speaks English so let's charter a flight and save some money.
    • Yage2006, on 07/05/2008, -0/+1Hey some isps there have a cap too .
      But its like 1 TERABYTE .
      BBB.Se's 100/100 service has that cap.
  • Borgcube636, on 07/05/2008, -1/+63Except... capping bandwidth would also make downloading legitimately purchased games from Steam or the like virtually impossible. Nice job, IPS's, for ***** 20 women while you're so drunk you think its just one.
    • the1maxim, on 07/05/2008, -2/+38Dugg for making no ***** sense at all......keep it up!!!!!!!!
    • CCUboogernjit, on 07/05/2008, -3/+0did you mean nice job ISP's?
    • MacParrot, on 07/05/2008, -0/+2Bluto: Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? HELL NO!

      Boone: Germans?

      Otter: Forget it, he's on a roll
  • the1maxim, on 07/05/2008, -0/+31This bandwidth capping ***** needs to be nipped in the bud now before it gets out of hand. The internet is the only unrestricted thing left in the country........these companies shouldn't be allowed to get away with any of these practices.
    • CCUboogernjit, on 07/05/2008, -2/+0I think all these crazy mass filesharers should band together to make some sort of underground network thats not part of the internet and use that only for file transfers then sign up for the cheapest service so all the isps cant complain about bandwidth hogs plus they lose money cause noone wants their fastest services.The only problem with this is that how would one keep this underground?
    • KronosZul, on 07/05/2008, -0/+0...I don't think that would be possible...
    • CCUboogernjit, on 07/05/2008, -2/+0comon man ANYTHING is possible if you just go to zombo.com you can do anything at zombocom.
    • WallyAnti, on 07/06/2008, -0/+1It's easy. Don't buy from them. Educate everyone you can and impose personal responsibility upon them. Don't be nice to people because they allow themselves and help to let others get raped by this sort of crap. I will be very very noisy about this if it happens to me. I will switch ISP's so fast...
  • a1cd, on 07/05/2008, -0/+18I ***** hate Bandwidth caps, last month i got a "You have used 75% of your bandwidth" message from rogers about halfway through the month.. never mind downloading ***** I had to worry about each click pushing me over the top.

    I have been with the same internet company for years, and they just change a big part of your service without lowering rates.. like would it be fair if TV companies took out 1/4 of the channels and didnt lower their price?.... oh wait.. they do.

    seriously... this should be some kind of law to stop companies from doing this type of stuff
    • shawnanigans, on 07/05/2008, -0/+2I hate that message. Makes me all nervous and angry. Angrous? Rogers should suck a Bell end.
  • Slash0, on 07/05/2008, -0/+10So how long will it be before Viacom accuses ISPs of profiting from piracy?
    • the1maxim, on 07/05/2008, -0/+3About 3 minutes from the time you hit submit.
    • supermanly, on 07/05/2008, -0/+4Well that one I'll let go. Think about it Viacom (we ***** hate 'em) vs. Comcast (we ***** hate 'em), Let 'em butt heads and waste money
      • chaosblade77, on 07/05/2008, -0/+1As long as we profit in the end, I'm all for it. Otherwise, those charges will probably just roll back to us.
  • umbrellainabin, on 07/05/2008, -2/+41***** BUSH
    ***** THE RIAA
    ***** THE MPAA
    ***** THE IFPI
    ***** THE BFI
    ***** VIACOM
    ***** COMCAST
    ***** MEDIADEFENDER
    ***** AT&T
    ***** BREIN
  • nmnnotmyname, on 07/05/2008, -2/+8...
    You know, I come to digg aware that every other article i will have to say this.

    *****! ***** ***** ***** *****, *****!
  • lamiaconfitor, on 07/05/2008, -1/+18or, the possibility of ISPs benefiting from Piracy leads to internet bandwith caps. Seriously, I work at nights and watch all my TV online (through legal sites like Hulu) and download games off of steam instead of buying disks. I hate these people so much.
  • ThatEvilGuy, on 07/05/2008, -2/+8As always the corporations find one way or the other to ***** over the consumer.
    • CCUboogernjit, on 07/05/2008, -3/+1yes I know how much a corporation such as Digg likes to ***** you over and over again by providing you with a free service with which you can ***** to your hearts content. Or how about Google and their goddamn search service. They are all just a bunch of assholes right?
      • MtheoryX, on 07/05/2008, -0/+1lol@CCUbgoogernjit thinking that Google's search service is some kind of ***** charity.

        Yeah, that's right, keep thinking that you are getting something for nothing. That regularly happens in economics, doesn't it?
      • CCUboogernjit, on 07/05/2008, -0/+0thats not the point. The point is that even though they are making money through advertising they are still providing a service for free for you to use. So this corporation is absolutely ***** over the customer by providing you with a free service. By doing this Google has found its way to ***** over the customer right? Just like what ThatEvilGuy has said right?

        Dumbasses on Digg
  • Narfig, on 07/05/2008, -3/+4The cold hard fact of the matter is that most customers don't even notice the bandwidth caps and are in no jeopardy of exceeding them. Folks who need to transfer 300GB/month are not "normal" users and the trend in business is "the customer is not always right" and to "fire your low profit, high maintenance customers". If this was really an issue, I would expect the market would act and give the people the product they want and some ISP would clean up with a cap-less solution. As this hasn't happened you need to ask yourself, "why aren't ISP's providing the product that I want?". Well, IMHO because the product the "you" want is not profitable or sustainable.

    If anything articles like this will give ISP's yet another bullet point to promote caps! "We're doing everything we can about piracy. including bandwidth caps!"
    • episodic, on 07/05/2008, -2/+5The problem isn't caps. It is really low caps. Like my family has embraced the internet as entertainment. Legal and all. We stream movies from netflix, watch tv shows on the media's websites, and are big fans of some user made materiel. The three of us probably pull down about 70-80 gigs. It really isn't that much. Add in my son gaming onling, steam, etc. . . In return we canceled our cable connection, and almost all of our calls are voip. . . Cap, sure - just make it make sense. Below 100 gigs isn't really fair.
    • Narfig, on 07/05/2008, -1/+0Sorry, but the median is closer to 10 GB. Your usage is still not "normal" in the ISP's eyes. As well, gaming and VOIP take very little bandwidth in the grand scope of things, so if you're actually using 70-80 GB per month you might want to check for Trojans, root kits and the like. I suppose 4 or 5 HD movies from netflix/iTunes per month could do it, but these are still not YET "normal" behaviors.

      (please make note of the quotes)
      • jo21, on 07/05/2008, -0/+1i only download anime, i get over 30gb

        something 50gb around is enough for me.

        but sadly i don't get even 15gb
    • WallyAnti, on 07/06/2008, -0/+1People will start exceeding those caps as more video is served up on the internet, and it will be as the generations who actually grew up with the internet start making more money. I don't know about anyone else but as the years have gone by my internet speeds have only increased and I haven't noticed any recent slow downs associated with the inception of Youtube or WoW or etc. So I'm calling ***** on the necessity of bandwidth caps.
  • thegreypilgrim, on 07/05/2008, -1/+5You guys need to fight the looming caps as long and hard as you can. Here in NZ we have some seriously ***** caps and outrageous fees. I currently pay $70 for 30GB on a "max/128" plan which in reality is about 3.5mbps down and 128k up - and that's one of the better plans around. I've watched our unlimited data plans get chopped to decent sized caps to either smaller caps or more expensive data progressively over the last 3-4 years. Overage on most ISP's here is around $2/GB. Previously, unused data expired each month, but some ISP's are now carrying data over to the next month (as they bloody well should!) and a couple are offering free "off peak" data (between 1am - 7am). A taste of things to come if your ISP's head down the same rocky road as here...
  • sirloin, on 07/05/2008, -1/+5BS way to screw you out of money.. they could simply charge for teirs of bandwidth like many do, a low speed limits the amount you could possible download in a month.
    every where on the planet with caps cost more.
    we have no health compitition in the us as we don't force them to share infrastructure like other countries do.
    Free markets don't exist in the us, only protectionists ones.
  • fsuarez2005, on 07/05/2008, -1/+2They don't want anyone, but them to make money. HA!

    • CCUboogernjit, on 07/05/2008, -0/+0Yes as a company whos only purpose IS to make money they are so gonna give their profits away to some charity oh and btw HA! to you too
  • machocheese34, on 07/05/2008, -2/+1Fios FTW, at least for now
  • BonersMilloy, on 07/05/2008, -1/+2So when will a class action lawsuit be filed against comcast for false advertising then? I pay for unlimited access...
    • CCUboogernjit, on 07/05/2008, -0/+0well to be honest I believe that when they do actually put a real cap they would be smart enough to change their advertising to be similar to ads of isps in other countries that have already been capping.
  • dreamweaver1984, on 07/05/2008, -1/+2this practice needs to be stopped quickly..if its not one freedom its another ;-/
  • ThreeDee912, on 07/05/2008, -1/+2This is just like what the cell phone companies are doing. A cap on minutes or data, and if you go over, you are either shut out, or charged excessive overages. Way to screw people out of more money...
    • CCUboogernjit, on 07/05/2008, -1/+0use skype they have a 10000 min package for 3 $ a month if you use more then 10000 min a month now you know why your cell phone bill is so high! PS its not the cell phone company its you.
  • frostcrow, on 07/05/2008, -5/+2
    You want unlimited downloads ? The whole " I paid for 10mb I should get 10 Mbs ! " well just get your 10mb from the same place your greedy ISP does. It is 10mb up and 10Mb down 24/7 and it only costs $800.00 a month (depending on your location it could be as low as $400.00 or as high at $1,500.00 a month for 10Mbs).

    Back before all the P2P and Streaming movies an ISP could buy the $1,000.00 a month line and all the subscribers shared it. Now days they have pay all these thousands and thousands of dollars for their connections and a few subscribers can suck up all of it and scream about how they are paying for it so they should get it.

    What you are paying for is sharing , if you want your own be ready to pay a few hundred dollars a month.



    • CCUboogernjit, on 07/05/2008, -2/+1I bet that dedicated connection is probably more stable plus if your upload is so high just imagine the god like seed ratio you will have on bittorrent!! Expensive high quality internets BRING IT ON!!!
    • frogskins, on 07/05/2008, -1/+1You obviously have no idea how peering agreements work between ISP's. Maybe it is something you should investigate as your statement is entirely incorrect. Large ISP's pay absolutely nothing for bandwidth between themselves and other large ISP's.

      Sure, there is infrastructure costs but it is minimal at best.
  • Jingoism, on 07/05/2008, -3/+1This is another scare tactic, it won't happen, too many companies stand to much to lose.
    • postmodernpilot, on 07/05/2008, -0/+1I doubt it, with other countries already using bandwidth caps and our own companies testing it. It will probably become a reality whether we like it or not.
    • CCUboogernjit, on 07/05/2008, -0/+0yea um the thing is that they WANT to lose to greedy bandwidth customers that just ruin the experience for everyone else so um the jokes on you.
  • leoofborg, on 07/05/2008, -0/+5@thegreypilgrimthegreypilgrim :: It's already happening here in the 'states. Thanks for the post, I thought the USA was the -only- 1st world country with crap for broadband. I've lived in Japan and Germany... and if it was only on the basis of connectivity I'd be back in either place in an instant.

    -Leo, coming in from a satlink out in the US countryside, 7 GB quota/mo, 1.25M down 128K up, 'courtesy' of ATT WB. You may say yuck at any time.

    PS While the cities in Calif have anywhere from 6-9M down, out in the rural townships the average for DSL is more like 1.5 - 3M down due to 'not having proper infrastructure'.. and no I do not live near a Wicker Man. The state of US ISPs is deplorable.
    • Narfig, on 07/05/2008, -0/+0"coming in from a satlink out in the US countryside, 7 GB quota/mo, 1.25M down 128K up, 'courtesy' of ATT WB. You may say yuck at any time."

      That is likely the difference. In Germany or Japan did you live in the countryside or in an apartment building that had fiber in it's basement?
  • anonnos, on 07/05/2008, -1/+2I paid for faster speeds because i want to download more/do things faster and damn it i am gonna use it!
    • CCUboogernjit, on 07/05/2008, -1/+0Well then your the damn reason they are gonna switch to bandwidth caps!! Cause then you get to pay more for all the data you download and then you have every right to use it!! But no, instead of playing nice and sharing the bandwidth with everyone else you just gotta download that extra ISO or movie and be an all around general ***** when it comes to downloading. Now everyone has to suffer because of greedy bitches like you. If you wanna download so much BUY A DEDICATED LINE! Then we will see how many ISOs you download or movies you watch. when your paying 800$ a month! Oh and we cant forget that you not really downloading pirated ISOs or movies no your using your connection legitimately by downloading tons of linux ISOs and netflix movies. Right.......
    • anonnos, on 07/05/2008, -0/+0Greedy?If using a service that i am paying for is being greedy then we live in a strange world.You really don't have to be a pirate to use loads of bandwidth. No one cared about this stuff until they started talking about these caps so why do you care now. If you don't use alot of bandwidth then you have nothing to worry about right? And who is to say what i can and can't use my connection for? The internet is one of the few places left that allows you freedom to do the many things that you want. I certainly will not just let it sit there and not use it. I payed for better speeds for a reason and it would be a disgrace to myself if i didn't use it the way i wanted to. The internet and our connection to it , like any other technology, has improved over the years and is still improving.It will only get faster. If these companies are worrying about someone downloading too much then they are shooting themselves in the foot for proving faster connections which encourage people to use the internet more.
      • CCUboogernjit, on 07/05/2008, -0/+0yes you are paying for it but the fact is that the pays for an OC-12 line. This line usually costs around 3-4000$ a month it provides bandwidth at 6Mb for about 100 customers. If they want to stick more customers on that line thats ok because they assume that not everyone will be using it all the time. In fact some isps even went as far as to use speedbooster tech which basically speeds up the first few megabytes of a transmission to 12Mb which is excellent for the majority. But now lets say we have greedy people like you that are using the line all the time. Not only does this degrade the service for everyone else especially if there are more people like you in your neighborhood, it ends up costing the isps more money because they now have to lease out another oc12 line when they get new customers. So whats the solution to this? They are publicly traded companies which have to make money correct? The solution is whats has been standard in Europe and other parts of the world : Bandwidth caps. This way the people who usually don't do heavy downloading (the majority) don't have to pay more money when comcast has to raise their prices when jackasses download too much. In fact comcast can lower their price to bring in more customers to compete with dsl when they are assured they wont be paying out of the ass for some little dumbass kid who downloads the whole internets in a whole month.Now there are about 300 million americans and according to this site

        http://www.podcastingnews.com/2008/07/03/us-broadb ...

        about 55% have broadband and according to this site

        http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?story ...

        there are a bout 5 million online movie rental subscribers. Now assuming that ALL netflix subscribers use the online movie function, that leaves 160 million broadband users out of the 165 that DONT do online movie downloading. That leaves torrents and Linux ISO downloading as high bandwidth applications. (I know that they are streaming sites such as joost but these guys have even less users then netflix that the people who dont stream on netflix could possibly make up for joost users) Since Linux is an whole world installed base of 1% meaning a possibly very small user base in the US, then linux is not the problem either. Whats left? Yea thats right torrents.

        "No one cared about this stuff until they started talking about these caps" No one cares period. Only the heavy downloaders care and if regular people did care they would have canceled a long time ago and would have done without internet as a way of protest sine the internet is not something you need to continue living.

        "And who is to say what i can and can't use my connection for?" The people providing your internet service since they are providing a SERVICE and can take that away from you at any time. They want to make the most amount of people happy and that does not include you since your in the minority because your a heavy downloader.

        "The internet is one of the few places left that allows you freedom to do the many things that you want. I certainly will not just let it sit there and not use it."

        Fine go and pay 300$ a month but dont ***** with us others who dont believe in your wise ass belief that unlimited internet access is a god given right and who just want to surf the web for not alot of money.

        "I payed for better speeds for a reason and it would be a disgrace to myself if i didn't use it the way i wanted to."
        Well get ready to pay more. Then we will see how much of a disgrace it really is.

        "The internet and our connection to it , like any other technology, has improved over the years and is still improving.It will only get faster."
        The faster it gets the more GB transferred the more of a reason to have caps.
        "If these companies are worrying about someone downloading too much then they are shooting themselves in the foot for proving faster connections which encourage people to use the internet more."
        They want to provide a faster connection for the masses! That will make the most amount of people happier. But the problem is that you will reach a point (and some places like fios areas are already there) where your download speed is faster then the websites server upload speed. This is excellent because then at that speed the price will go down and then the isps can entice even more people to join the internet but not if there are assholes the download all this garbage and keep the price up!.
  • Drizzit, on 07/05/2008, -0/+5Countdown until an Artist sues an ISP for profiting on piracy begins now.
  • hobophobe, on 07/05/2008, -0/+3Many people will be way under the caps and the ISPs will be forced to offer lower plans to them. That will hurt their revenues, so they'll then start pushing their customers to use MORE bandwidth. That's the thing. If they weren't being stupid to begin with they'd realize more bandwidth is in their best interests. After all, they sell... bandwidth.
    • mikinurbook, on 07/05/2008, -0/+1Precisely. Without caps, people don't really notice how much bandwidth they use. But as soon as the casual users start seeing how much they DON'T use, they're going to be unhappy with that now-higher than needed plan, which will result in a tiered infrastructure...or a lot of unhappy customers who feel ripped off.

      So yes, with caps, P2P users will become more profitable, but with the majority of users nationwide not fitting into that demographic, the majority becomes LESS profitable as they settle into less expensive plans.

      So what exactly is this headache all about, again?

  • Emachine, on 07/05/2008, -0/+8Thankfully I have a reasonable 8down/1up mega-bit-per-second unlimited connection.
    The way I see it, every second I'm not maxing it out, I'm not getting my money's worth.
  • arobicha, on 07/05/2008, -1/+0Rogers Canada started using that tactic this month. I have 60 "free" GB of bandwidth per month, and they charge you some ridiculous price per megabyte after that. I do a lot of SSH work from home, and just about everything I download over a megabyte or two is legally bought and paid for. They say it's because "It costs money to maintain the servers" which IS TRUE, but they also cap P2P traffic (something I use legally to share my own work, and larger personal files amongst friends) and effectively ruin the overall internet experience for me. Corporations shouldn't be allowed to control how you use the internet. I can't stand this crap.
  • riderofthestorm, on 07/05/2008, -2/+0As much as I hate the RIAA and cable companies, this comes to me our own fault. I'm a web-designer and I utilize significant bandwidth on occasion adding things and taking them off my servers (the backups are the real bitches), in addition to my secondary PC downloading Linux updates. However, everyone downloading illegal copies of crap are ruining things for everyone else. Until y'all have the money to hire a secret team of ninjas to take out every last person in the RIAA, stop pissing in the pool. It really sucks for those of us who use our services legitimately. Besides, out of say 5 households sharing a line without illegal downloading, I would guess that only 2 are using legit high bandwidth, the rest are people who read Digg and check email.
  • Ghiren, on 07/05/2008, -1/+1If ISPs really wanted to shut down P2P transfers, they should be capping upload bandwidth, not download bandwidth. People who share files and seed torrents would be the ones paying extra, just like how bandwidth costs are paid by a service provider, rather than by their customers. With fewer users to provide files (mostly from uncapped ISP users), P2P traffic would naturally decrease.

    An even better solution from a user's standpoint would be for ISPs to prioritize traffic based on ports. If traffic from commonly used ports (Port numbers under 1024, for example) was moved to the head of the line, then normal, low-bandwidth traffic could move at a reasonably fast speed while lower-priority P2P traffic could take up the remaining bandwidth without affecting other services.
  • AVigorVermin, on 07/05/2008, -2/+2I actually see the reasoning behind the caps...and think they are a good idea if they don't abuse them. Just like cell towers, the internet's tubes are finite, and I don't want some idiot down the neighborhood making my speed miserable if we pay the same money. That just doesn't make sense, and this would stop that from happening.
  • Scheissen, on 07/05/2008, -3/+2Look at all of these nerds. I bet you want the gubement to pay for your internet.
    • Dauntless1, on 07/08/2008, -0/+0No bitch, I want to use the internet I paid for. I play on xbox live. The service is ALWAYS ON. Metered internet + Xboxlive and only playing an average of three hours a week(We're not talking super-high usage here) is an internet bill for over $1300 here. When did that become fair?
  • MvTCracker, on 07/05/2008, -0/+2we will be downloading more and more video and virtual hard drives and iso files 250-500GB drives are so damn cheap now and windows seven will have built in support for its virtual drive format VHD and windows server 2008 has already done that with Hyper V

    so with bigger downloads more streams of higher and higher quality they have no choice but to increase bandwidth or die
  • biftek, on 07/05/2008, -1/+0nothing a bit of bandwidth budgeting wont fix , do you really need to download the internet today? there are many programs out there to keep track of your downloads to help you budget your cap
  • ryanspahn, on 07/05/2008, -0/+1This is where the content industries and ISPs need to meet and knock out a deal.

    X amount of bandwidth you pay for and file sharing is legalized. Content providers get paid through our monthly bills! The behavior of downloading/uploading (sharing) continues and the RIAA/MPAA STFU get paid and tons of awesome innovation happens!

    RIAA and MPAA open source your content!
  • ProDugg, on 07/05/2008, -0/+1If all the large ISPs actually take to this, then essentially it will be them that forces technology to move backwards on so many fronts. Such as (like other users have mentioned) inhibiting distribution over the internet for things like applications and videos etc. We would have to revert to sending dvd's/cd's via snail mail or worse having to spend gas money to go to a store to get the software piece. As far as video distribution goes, it could essentially kill videos on the net. VERY LAME. Not to mention lots of other technology today that has enhanced our experience on the internet (these things rely on todays great uncapped and speedy internet connections). Go ahead ISPs, pull the trigger, and get flamed amongst other things. Be the bad guys. I dare ya.
  • bbliss17, on 07/05/2008, -0/+1This needs to be dealt with now and stopped before they all do this and we are all paying 100's of dollars in internet fees
  • Phelanwolf75, on 07/06/2008, -0/+0The fact is they didn't keep upgrading their networks after the big .com crash and pc boom. they are running outdated networks that are not able to keep up with todays internet traffic and they know it and want to charge people MORE money to fix it. This isn't the beginning of the internet, we do more than check our emails and chat with friends online like we did back in 1998.

    Today's consumer does online video streaming LEGALLY with Netflix, Itunes, and Youtube. We play online video games like World of Warcraft, EVE Online. Lord of the Rings Online, Dungeons and Dragons and so on. Not to mention all the people that telecommute to and from work. When the ISP's give us extremely low data caps we will find other solutions like companies that give us slower speeds but without data caps and when this happens the ISP's will finally realize they are wrong.
  • WallyAnti, on 07/06/2008, -0/+2I'll drop my carrier like a hot potato if they cap me. This is completely anti-consumer.
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