Data Caps on ISP's

[Elysnoss]

It takes some effort on the user's part to hit or go over the cap. In other words, downloading illegally is what's going to get you there. Streaming music and playing WoW won't get you near 150+ GB per month (most services are 250 GB anyways). I see nothing wrong with this.

Honestly, people that claim they need 150GB just for basic web browsing really annoy me. It's not even about moderation, it's simply about not being stupid and purposely opening up all of the first 10000 links you got on Google when you searched for "free porn".

Me and my family (household of 4) have been using the same cable ISP (suddenlink) and their cable tv for years now. We used to not have a data cap and things were just fine but now without any prior warning I was surfing the web and BAM! You have reached your data cap! WTH what data cap??? So yea apparently we are now paying the same price we paid for no cap but now we have a 150gb cap per month! On top of that there will be fees involved for going over the cap!!!!! This all sounds like some sick twisted scam to get more money out of us to me..

I don't download anything illegally, don't go through 10k porn links, or any of that jazz and to the best of my knowledge neither does my family. They mostly use the internet for basic surfing things like email, facebook, youtube, ect. I am mostly a gamer and spend a lot of my time playing online games and such on top of normal surfing. Thats it! And so far we haven't had a problem but now all of a sudden we reached out data cap in only 9 days! x,x Big problem.. Plus I don't even think they offer an unlimited data plan anymore and it seems like other ISPs are doing the same bull.

Why the sudden change? Why are we paying the same amount of money we paid for no data cap to now suddenly having hidden fees and a data a cap that we hit after only 9 days?? This is kind of ridiculous..

[Racerover]

It's funny, my ISP has a cap of 250gb, but also states that I won't be charged for going over in fine print. Not sure how that equates to anything, but figured some may want to check into it. FWIW, I use Cox out of Arizona.

EDIT: Actual quote from my ISP.

Cox does not currently charge you additional fees if you exceed your allowance. If you determine that your Internet data usage will continue to exceed your allowance, we recommend that you consider a Cox High Speed Internet package that more closely matches your use of the service. If you are consistently going over your data usage allowance, you will also benefit from the faster speeds that come with a higher Internet package.

[inux94]

The caps aren't really there to stop torrenting, they're there to prevent heavy users saturating the lines with loads of downloads which would affect businesses and other users who use it normally in the day.

The cap in my country is solely due to greedyness, the owner/manager of the Greenlandic ISP earns ~4-6 millions of Danish krones(1.02 million USD) a year from ~58000 people!

They've responded with they needed to pay for the overseas cable, which have been paid of long, long ago. They're still charging people 750$ + extra for if you download more for 100GB/month with 4mbit down/1mb up.

There's no excuse why the download/upload rate should be at 4mbit/1mbit at the rate people pay per month with ~17.000 living in the capital city.


IMO when the price of upgrading equipment for ie. 4G speed, high-speed fiber cables and such is paid then ISP's should lower the prices, it's absurd.

[pizz]

Majority of the caps are a cash-grab. Or with ISPs that offer TV services, caps are to stop you from dropping their TV services for netflix etc..

Look up Exaflood, and how ISPs and a few market analysts try to say there will be no more bandwidth, pretty funny thing to read up about.

[Cyanotical]

i have a 250gb/month cap, i've gone over it the last three months in a row

the need for data caps is a joke, if it really was a serious issue it would be in bold print on the front of your service contract, not hidden away in fine print

with comcast the only difference between a 12/2 home connection and a 12/2 business class connection is that business class does not have a data cap,

business class is available to all home users, if data caps really are needed then this would not be the case, caps are just a way to occasionally slap someone with a $3000 cable/phone bill

[openair]

It takes some effort on the user's part to hit or go over the cap. In other words, downloading illegally is what's going to get you there. Streaming music and playing WoW won't get you near 150+ GB per month (most services are 250 GB anyways). I see nothing wrong with this.

Streaming music and PLAYING WoW wont. But watching videos on youtube, or Netflix, or other video streams (especially >720p) will. Installing games off Steam, WoW or extra PTR clients will. Install WoW + SWToR + the WoW PTR would be ~50% of a 150GB monthly cap. Watching 100% of the Blizzcon stream would have been a signification portion of my cap as well and the main reason i didn't watch any of it.

We have had data caps in Canada for years. I go over my $50/month 95gb cap almost every month and there is only one other company that can even compete with those speeds+caps. My only other option would be a DSL connection of AT MOST 5Mbit, but because of the quality/distance involved they cannot even guarantee >2Mbit without me paying for installation first.

These caps in Canada exist because of bottlenecks in infrastructure. The local lines could deliver 3-4 times my 10Mbit/95GB connection no problem, but not without 'limiting' bandwidth available to my neighbours and/or everyone else on the same side of the bottleneck as me. Its a service. They limit what is available to individuals so that the service remains reliable to all.

[Yousend]

It's a load a shit that they're feeding to computer illiterate people. They're trying to make people believe that if you use too much internet, you'll run out. However in reality, it's more of a "highway". The worse that can happen is that during peak hours, too many people are using their internet and the infrastructure can't handle the speed because there's too much people using it at once. (Kind of like a traffic jam)

Where they scam you is that they say it's a scarce resource and that you'll run out and not get your full speed if everyone is torrenting (which I guess might be true if EVERYONE is torrenting at high speed 24/7) but you can upgrade the infrastructure to (its expensive, but its doable) allow more bandwidth at once. So their response is that you can only use X amount of data per month and they count the amount of bandwidth you use at 4AM when no one is using the internet (therefore not affecting anything) the same as if you use it during peak hours (when the current infrastructure gets congested)

This of it this way. What if highways charged you per km or mile that you use on top of the fee they could charge you for it. Then they claim the reason they do it is to limit the amount of people use the highway so that there's no traffic jam. Would that make sense to you?

On a side note, ever wondered why they keep developing "new speeds so that you can use more Internets!" and then give those people access to more bandwidth a month? Because you know, bandwidth is a scarce resource, so I guess you better offer people more speed on the current infrastructure that uses this precious bandwidth.

http://stopthemeter.ca/ (Canadian organization trying to get rid of caps and price gouging in Canada.)

[haxartus]

Data caps aren't that necessary since if you are a major ISP, most of your heavy p2p traffic is inside the network between the users, and you don't pay that much for that.
I already have a higher speed to people from my ISP than I should have. I've seen 10MB/s and I pay for only 60mbps which should correspond to 7.5MB/s.

[Deleted]

England.


£30
30mb/s down
27 ping on wow.

No cap. :>

[namelessone]

How do you guys feel about data caps on ISP, according to ISPs the internet has become a "scarce" resource, sounds like money grubbing to me. I was wondering how you other online gamers felt about paying the same amount for potentially less internet, I'm also wondering how large game companies like Blizzard will react to this as in the long term this will likely hurt their subscriber base.
stopthecap.com

This is how we roll in Canada. We have data caps on all plans because our market is dominated by two providers who control the regulatory body through lobbying and own all communications infrastructure. Capitalism galore!

[Zergin8r]

Yeah and it sucks because in rural areas its like $150 for 60 GB a month with about 200kb download on a good day between everyone who is online... and with 4 people using the internet it's really hard to not go over that.

[Asics]

I have a 100gig monthly cap and I've hit it the past two months. Why? I stream Netflix and Hulu because it's cheaper than cable as well as use my computer for nearly everything.

My bill has doubled as a result. I don't download or torrent anything, just stream television because cable is so grossly overpriced.

Stop the cap please. If this wasn't the only ISP in my area I'd move providers.

[kendro1200]

It takes some effort on the user's part to hit or go over the cap. In other words, downloading illegally is what's going to get you there. Streaming music and playing WoW won't get you near 150+ GB per month (most services are 250 GB anyways). I see nothing wrong with this.

What about people who stream movies, buy and download software over the internet rather than go to a store, or are constantly transferring large work related files back and forth between home and office/school? Data caps are money making schemes to milk customers for everything they can. The fact that AT&T started a data cap on their DSL services enrages me to no end. Wireless data caps I can understand due to the bandwith available with the technology. While the technology itself can exceed current landline tech in use, there isn't a half decent infrastructure to support the tech. Landlines on the other hand are a penny for a hundred, unless you're in very secluded portions of the US. Reintroduction of data caps is the same as paying by the minute for dial up 56k service from the 90's. To top it all off, the tech used in the US and parts of the UK are severly dated in comparison the materials and tech available. When I say dated, I mean severely dated, like the new gen of hardware was available cheap over a decade ago. An example would be like we're driving around in a model t, while other parts of the world have mustangs.

[Auralian]

How do you guys feel about data caps on ISP, according to ISPs the internet has become a "scarce" resource, sounds like money grubbing to me. I was wondering how you other online gamers felt about paying the same amount for potentially less internet, I'm also wondering how large game companies like Blizzard will react to this as in the long term this will likely hurt their subscriber base.
stopthecap.com

I played online games for 3 hours a night 7 days a week, plus had a second comp downloading music nearly 24/7 while a third on was on NetFlix constantly. We never passed the 250 gig limit on Comcast. If you have a problem meeting that then maybe you should reevaluate what you are doing. If you need more then it should cost you more as 99% of all the US users will never even come close to it.

Cell Phone providers did this as well and I don't see any big complaints.

Here are some examples of how different ISPs describe 250 GB of data usage:

Send 50 million plain text e-mails (at 5KB/e-mail)
Download 62,500 songs (at 4 MB/song)
Download 125 standard-definition movies (at 2 GB/movie)
Upload 25,000 hi-resolution digital photos (at 10 MB/photo)
(Source: Comcast)
Download 50,000 songs
Download 570 (1 hour) TV shows
Download 285 standard-definition movies
Download 25 high-definition movies.
Download one high-definition movie (approx 8 GB) every day for 30 days

I could see if a large family was sharing the same connection they could pass the bandwidth but to bad to sad, you use more you pay more. If that is a problem bump up your plan.

[Asics]

250 gig.

Most users complaining about the caps are sub-200gigs.

[Shakadam]

I played online games for 3 hours a night 7 days a week, plus had a second comp downloading music nearly 24/7 while a third on was on NetFlix constantly. We never passed the 250 gig limit on Comcast.

??? You were downloading music nearly 24/7 on top of other things and you didn't break 250gb in a month? What's your connection speed? 100kb/s?
I'd break 250gb in less than half a day if I was downloading something constantly on my connection.

Anyways ontopic: The reason you have data caps is greed and capitalism, simple as that. You only have a few large ISP's and through lobbying etc your government lets them do pretty much whatever the hell they want, and ofc it's cheaper for the ISP's to implement caps instead of actually upgrading the infrastructure.

I'm just happy some european countries still have some sense in at least this matter. 100mbit down/100mbit up, no cap ftw. Hell I don't even pay anything for it, it's a bonus everyone in my area gets.

[haxartus]

I played online games for 3 hours a night 7 days a week, plus had a second comp downloading music nearly 24/7 while a third on was on NetFlix constantly. We never passed the 250 gig limit on Comcast. If you have a problem meeting that then maybe you should reevaluate what you are doing. If you need more then it should cost you more as 99% of all the US users will never even come close to it.

Cell Phone providers did this as well and I don't see any big complaints.

Here are some examples of how different ISPs describe 250 GB of data usage:

Send 50 million plain text e-mails (at 5KB/e-mail)
Download 62,500 songs (at 4 MB/song)
Download 125 standard-definition movies (at 2 GB/movie)
Upload 25,000 hi-resolution digital photos (at 10 MB/photo)
(Source: Comcast)
Download 50,000 songs
Download 570 (1 hour) TV shows
Download 285 standard-definition movies
Download 25 high-definition movies.
Download one high-definition movie (approx 8 GB) every day for 30 days

I could see if a large family was sharing the same connection they could pass the bandwidth but to bad to sad, you use more you pay more. If that is a problem bump up your plan.

It's not a matter of use, it's a matter of why the cap is in place. It doesn't make sense and it's not necessary.

[Quincey]

??? You were downloading music nearly 24/7 on top of other things and you didn't break 250gb in a month? What's your connection speed? 100kb/s?
I'd break 250gb in less than half a day if I was downloading something constantly on my connection.

Anyways ontopic: The reason you have data caps is greed and capitalism, simple as that. You only have a few large ISP's and through lobbying etc your government lets them do pretty much whatever the hell they want, and ofc it's cheaper for the ISP's to implement caps instead of actually upgrading the infrastructure.

I'm just happy some european countries still have some sense in at least this matter. 100mbit down/100mbit up, no cap ftw. Hell I don't even pay anything for it, it's a bonus everyone in my area gets.

and uh, where exactly do you live?

On topic -

I dont get download caps, but speed caps
Virgin media UK

basically between 9AM and midnight if i download more than 3gb my internet is slowed to the point where its "unusable" and it held that way for 5 hours, IF in those 5 hours I download more than 100mb the cap is reapplied for another 5hours, regardless of it being midnight or not.

However I don't complain since the speeds I'm getting at night EXCEED what I pay for by a huge margin. I pay for 2mb internet, yet I download at well over 6mbs and upload at nearly 1.5mbs - I'm not sure if its an oversight by the company but I can set whatever I want to download overnight (patches, steam games, etc etc) and its usually done when I wake up the next day - the caps are more than enough for me to play games all day so its working out good and best of all CHEAP.

[Dirgon]

It takes some effort on the user's part to hit or go over the cap. In other words, downloading illegally is what's going to get you there. Streaming music and playing WoW won't get you near 150+ GB per month (most services are 250 GB anyways). I see nothing wrong with this.

Two users who stream netflix and television via hulu is more than enough to cap your bandwidth in a month. Though it probably doesn't help that I generally have several large files to download (legitimately through dreamspark and other student software resources)

Hell I had to download the SWTOR beta three times before I got an uncorrupted install. That was 60gb+

Don't even get me started on how gipped all the people are who've been paying for offsite data backups are by this. Try recovering a terrabyte of backup now over the internet.

While the average user would have to try pretty hard to cap, it's not unfeasible to find legitimate scenarios where the caps just aren't high enough for some users.

[nyxtyr]

Haven't read the second page but ATT recently added a cap on their internet after having their elite DSL package since it came out well over 5 years ago it was simply changed and a cap was placed on it without question just sent a notice still paying the same price as previously uncapped service. details: att . com /esupport/internet/usage.jsp#fbid=203k8hO8y0L

3 PS3's in the house, we don't have or use cable for our tv we use hulu plus and netflix which is always streaming on the samsung smart tv or one of the 3 ps3's in the house. 2 PC's playing WoW, SC2 roughly 3-6 hours a day. if not playing those all three ps3's are playing CoD or some game online. I hit my cap + went over since they added this cap every month. on average we use 500gbs a month if not more depending on the weather and how much we're in the house. + 5 people living in the house surely doesn't help everyone streaming their own movies or tv shows off netflix/hulu in each room. Top if off the cap is for upload and download speed so it adds up quick and even quicker with the higher connections.

Anyway i had several 300+ USD bills per month for going over the cap since they added the cap. 10usd for extra 50gb's. I'm currently in the process of switching to timewarner as they have a 50mb connection plan uncapped for 100usd however the actual down speeds are really around 20-30mb's

My neighbor wanted to get internet. They were looking to get ATT with their simple cheap packages but they weren't able to without getting the u-verse bundle the sales reps kept telling them but they already had directTV for their TV ended up deciding to drop directtv and saying hell with ATT and went with timewarner. My current location only had 4 internet providers for DSL/CABLE.