Cox cable and others limiting Data Transfer soon

[brirrspliff]

finally! finally they are starting to stop this nonsense of all those joe averages and their hundreds of gigabytes of traffic a month for nonsense. they should limit all traffic to a reasonable amount so people who do nothing else but stream/dl porn and shit are punished for it or not able to do it anymore.

the internet is one of the biggest power-eating sources on our planet. and most of it is for nonsense. we can't develop nature-friendly cars and stuff but download terabytes of data every month. start thinking.

[Deleted]

I'm sort of surprised at a lot of the people that are okay with these caps. It seems remarkably short-sighted in my mind. These usage caps are being implemented now because of how quickly the amount of bandwidth the average user uses has increased in the last 5-10 years. ISPs in the US have known this is the direction bandwidth usage would go, but have refused to upgrade their networks to compensate, opting instead to simply continue reaping the profits of their old networks.

As others have mentioned, this is also an anti-competitive move. Most ISPs are in some way subsidiaries of larger media companies that are losing TV and Movie revenue to streaming. They've been unable to develop and implement a business model that works with streaming in mind, so instead they want to try to use these price increases to effectively negate the price advantage of streaming.

Yes, bandwidth costs money, but not nearly as much as ISPs like to claim it does. In fact, their costs are going down while the price to the end user goes up. The backbone that they lease time on is being improved, even if they choose not to improve their own networks.

Implementing these caps now is the little bit of forward thinking ISPs are doing. They want these caps in place now, because yes, 400GB is more than enough now. But it will be an instant cash cow for them in a few years when it isn't, and then these policies are already in place when legislation finally rolls along trying to prevent them. As is typical of any modern corporation, they won't look ahead to provide better service, but they will when it comes to finding any way to protect their profits that doesn't cost them more.

[grabyogat]

The caps are also a measure of anti-piracy acts, which placed the duty on the ISP to monitor and contain piracy, P2P and other illegal activities that their users partake in.

Wait till the 5 step anti-piracy notifications. 5 levels of transfer throttling, followed by a shutdown/suspension and assessment of penalities - right on your internet bill. Don't tell them you didn't do it, they really do know.

[Argroth]

You may have already gotten an e-mail from your ISP about new so called "Data Usage Limits".
Now they are getting ready to enforce them. This will affect all people in the U.S. that rely on streaming
or downloading of any kind. There are already several websites out there devoted to the issue.

Please read :

I have noticed that in the last 3 years instead of things costing less as they should in a recession - they cost more. I will not list examples because it is almost everything. And now this. Americans are 25th in data speeds and the cable companies and those that own the lines are essential monopolies. They have shareholders to answer to. Where I live there is no other option for service - Cox has a monopoly. I pay $390 a month for my services which are extensive. Now they sound like they are willing to shut me off when the time comes. They are posting these caps as a first strike. Then they will enforce them in the coming months. I have the data usage graph and I am over their so called "Limits".

What they should have done is built out the infrastructure years ago knowing that people are going to need more and more bandwidth. Regular people. In fact if they do not start immediately this is a very serious problem for our country. We have reached a tipping point and we will fall behind in one more way as a nation.

This is not speculation. These are facts. The companies that control the lines did not build out. And now we will pay for it for years. We not only will pay more to use the internet. A lot more. But we will not have the speeds we need to support our homes and businesses in the years ahead.

It is not a proud day.

It is shameful what cable/internet companies are doing.
I've heard that the next evil trend they intend to enforce is charging by the megabyte.

Gone are the days of unlimited internet service with a reasonable price and a smile. They have gone the way of Blizzard heartless and shamefully upfront with greed.

[powerstuck]

Open your contract, if there is no specified limit, you can sue them (or at least warn them you will do so...it does the job pretty well with my ISP) for breaking the contract. You can also renew your contract for a while without them being able to add modifications to it.

[grabyogat]

Open your contract, if there is no specified limit, you can sue them (or at least warn them you will do so...it does the job pretty well with my ISP) for breaking the contract. You can also renew your contract for a while without them being able to add modifications to it.

Except all (real life) contracts have a clause allowing the vendor to change the terms and conditions at any time, allowing you to exit the contract at no charge should you no longer agree to the updated terms. This suing thing you speak of only occurs by people with no knowledge of law or business and on internet forums.

[Viscerous]

I'm not really against data limits. I think there is a reasonable middle ground here. If I was to put a number on it I would say 125GB/month is fair. This will allow the average consumer plenty of room to stream their movies and surf the web as much as they like.

I would consider myself an above average user and I don't even come close to that. Then again I'm the only one using my connection. Supposing a family of four you could come close to that, but I can't see it going over too often.

If I was a parent I would look into capping my childrens individual usage to say 25Gb/month. If they're going over then they're probably doing something illegal anyways and should be shut down.

You realize that some games are over your 25GB limit? Rage is 25GB and SWTOR is around 40GB. I have never had a problem with my 250GB cap, but my biggest complaint is our speed in general. We are getting ripped off so bad compared to countries like South Korea and Japan. Luckily, Google has started a new service in a few areas with 1Gbps connections available. Maybe it will force some of the other companies to actually upgrade their lines.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/n...merica-yup.ars

Shows what we could have.

[ewhenn]

Such horse-poo.

I bought AvP this week on steam (16 GB download), and will be buying RAGE tomorrow (25 GB). That's 40 GB for 2 games. Yeah, buying two games in a month is "abusive". These greedy corporations can F-Off. If I'm forced to get a business connection to get unlimited, I'll start downloading linux ISOs 24/7 with an auto-downloader. If they find my 200 GB a month a problem, just wait till I start downloading 2 TB+ a month in retaliation.