With 56% of American Internet connections now capped, advocates ask FCC for probe

Source: RawStory.com

The practice of capping Internet bandwidth and selling it as a metered commodity has fully taken hold, to the point where 56 percent of U.S. internet connections are now on plans that restrict how much information users can access before triggering additional fees.

For an Internet landscape that's been accustomed to unlimited access to information the world over, this represents a sea-change for many broadband subscribers. And to at least two prominent Washington, D.C. advocacy groups, it's cause for immense concern.

That's why the directors of Public Knowledge and New America's Open Technology Initiative -- two Washington tech policy groups -- have written to the Federal Communications Commission to request they investigate the potential for these practices encouraging anti-competitive activities.

"These caps, which are now a fact of life for 56% of all broadband users, can perniciously undermine each of the goals set out by the Commission in the National Broadband Plan while at the same time stifling the competition and innovation that has established itself as the sine qua non of the internet economy," they wrote.

Read more: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/05/09/with-56-of-american-internet-connections-now-capped-advocates-ask-fcc-for-probe/

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AT&T's bandwidth cap for DSL users, which went into effect on May 2, limit users to just 150 gigabytes per month before the fees start piling up. While they claim the limitations are intended to ensure every user has adequate bandwidth at all times, critics say their intent is to force businesses into an artificially restricted business model that commoditizes bandwidth.

"In the world of broadband data caps, the caps recently implemented by AT&T are particularly aggressive," the groups explained. "Unlike competitors whose caps appear to be at least nominally linked to congestions during peak-use periods, AT&T seeks to convert caps into a profit center by charging additional fees to customers who exceed the cap. In addition to concerns raised by broadband caps generally, such a practice produces a perverse incentive for AT&T to avoid raising its cap even as its own capacity expands."

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and are off air and have an internet streaming device. we watch almost everything via the internet now. so such a thing would negatively affect us for sure. i think it's insane.... the great thing about the internet has always been that it was an equal playing field for everyone. you pay for your ticket, and you could go to any site you wanted unfettered. this allowed amazon and other online marketplaces as well as netflix and so many other online places to thrive. we already pay a lot for broadband to begin with.

and this is going to get a lot of us looking for other ISPs.

roadrunner... we are the last ones on the street that can get it. the line literally stops right after our house. and there is that or dial up... or satellite internet i suppose. i can hope that we could have a situation with a true competition, but corporations don't really want competition.... or a 'free' market... they want monopolies and to be able to do whatever they want.

...because we can no longer afford to have television service. You know, the tv that used to be free to watch but now too expensive for many to afford.

With cable and phone companies offering both TV and internet, they lose money if you dump your cable/satellite and get all your entertainment via streaming.

in almost every case, a simple audio file can be sufficient to replace a gargantuan video file. RealAudio steaming file is practical on a 56k dialup connection. There is nothing wrong with substituting a text file in place of the audio steam.

Most people have no idea of appropriate file sizes for Internet use. They just assume everyone has no problem with 10MB photos and 100MB video files.

I can read faster than I can watch.
No hiccuping in the video as it continuously stops to "buffer" some more.
I can skim text much easier than video.
No waiting for an unwanted ad video (my ad blocker catches some of these, but not all.)
Reading news feels more natural to me anyways - I still read the real newspaper.

Obviously my parents with the occasional e-mail and monthly log-on to facebook don't come close. I suspect my own usage is well under as well. Can the ISP's show a concrete cost impact at the 150Gig's or wherever they set the price point? Yes we don't want people to be gouged by their ISP's. But we also shouldn't be subsidizing someones business either.

On edit 215hrs of max download speed for a T-1 line (1.5MBps).

Caps vary.

There's no warning.

And you end up monitoring your usage to the point of distraction. And this at a time when everything on the internet is broadband heavy, where we are being encouraged to stream and download games and videos, compute in the cloud, etc. This kind of "service" is antiquated, better suited to the 1990s than the 2010s. Is it any wonder we are well down on the list of broadband services worldwide. Truly pathetic.

And even if you're not capped, the availability of services if you're in rural America is laughable and, at least for me, obscenely expensive. Third World country, anyone?

If we are going to beef up the net enough for everyone to have streaming movies/tv. That could require considerable additional Infrastructure. Either we pay for it in taxes at a time when we are asking public employees to take cuts. Or there are going to be alot of low income and rural folks who won't be able to afford it. Something like the old Rural Electrification Administration?

And the big cable TV and Satellite providers are going to fight tooth and nail to protect their cash cow.

That's my bet. For one, those 56% who are capped might very well be willing to shell out another few dollars a month for unlimited service. Look at Verizon Wireless; they are sticking with their unlimited usage for $30 for their phones. Granted, that's not necessarily comparable to home use with computers and streaming tvs, but they have stuck with it while ATT and other offer tiered service and throttled back service. You may be one of those Verizon haters, but you have to admit that they are providing a service their competitors are not, and I, for one, appreciate it.

The phone company here provides a tremendous unlimited service for some ridiculously reasonable price, but it's limited to about 15% of the state. As much as I hate that company, I'd sign up in a flash to save the money, and I'm sure others will sign up - and spend more than they do with throttled back satellite services - for the opportunity for faster unlimited broadband.

Almost anybody can pay for federally regulated, uncensored, uncapped internet. As a matter of fact, that's what the ISP's pay for, and then resell to consumers. If you have a local ISP, the infrastructure is likely already in place.

Look to the comparitive pricing in other nations. they are providing the service, often at lower prices than we pay. We are already paying for the service. The money just isn't being used to provide profit not service.

It is interesting to note that the big boys providing service never seem to undercut each other too much. Just enough to make it look like competition, without actually ever bringing prices down.

At 5Mbps, consuming 150GB would take (((150,000,000,000 bytes * 8 bits/byte) / 5,000,000 bits/s) / 3600 seconds/hour) = 66.7 hours. At 15Mbps, one third of this is 22.2 hours. Nothing, of course, connects at that speed all the time.

Even this is not an accurate measure, since there's a significant amount of overhead involved (e.g. DNS queries, IP routing information, TCP setup/ACK/teardown packets, etc) in connecting to the Internet.

You as a consumer aren't subsidizing someone's business. Most ISPs will boot or force an upgrade to a business account on someone using a home account to run a server. At the scale an ISP buys bandwidth, a GB costs them a tiny fraction of a cent, assuming they don't own their own link to one of the many MAE or peering points.

that the ISPs are gateways to the web, not the owners of it.
I understood that the web backbone was financed and owned by the federal government (us) not ATT or Comcast, or the other providers.
**Edit, Unfortunately I was mis-informed, the government privatized in the 1990s and now the largest telecommunication corps control the internet backbones...**

I see this as continuing attempt to regulate the content and free expression of the web, like these companies have done with print and broadcast media.

Government ISP.

...like anyone will want to add MORE governmental intrusion on the web.

Sorry, I find that to be a very naive comment.

At least the American people have some supposed control over the government, as opposed to none at all with the corps.

giving power and control over to corporations over something essential like health insurance is assinine.

Roads and highways are owned by the Government (With some limited exceptions). Being owned by the Government, the Government has the right to make sure you stay to the right (except in England and former Some Former English Colonies, including India, where the Government require you to stay to the left), Government has the right to require you to stop at red lights and only proceed when the light turns green. The Government demands that any vehicle you drive on the government owned roads meet minimum safety standards. Those are just to intrusive for me, lets give the roads to private Enterprise who will NOT make any such requirements, just that you pay through the nose.

My point is simple, Government Ownership and Government intrusion is NOT the same thing. It is NOT the case with the Highway system and does NOT have to be the case with Government ownership of the web. With Government Ownership, comes Government response to what people want (including voters and non-voters) unlike private Enterprise where profits is the sole object of providing any service. Government agencies will respond to what the people want, it may take time, but it will respond even if that means increasing costs and/or lost of profits. Private Enterprise values profits more then service and if the two come into conflict, profits will win out. Thus Government is best provider of any service used by the general public, be it Highways, other means of transportation, Schools, Fire protection, Police Protection or even Military protection. With that ownership comes the ability to regulate what is being provided by the Government, the general rule is reasonable regulations, but extreme regulations is not unheard of (but then extreme Regulations can occur when the service is provided by private companies, and in such situations the excessive regulations can be by the private providers OR the Government itself, remember private ownership does NOT prevent Government intrusion, it fact you can have BOTH, something less common when Government provides the service).

Or requiring that I be licensed to have a web page.

After all, we've seen what the FCC has done before to free broadcasters.

ban making your own isp to stop them? i mean, this is what we are dealing with here. these companies are going to protect themselves whatever way they can. i mean, they are losing cable customers to internet streaming and netflix so they want to cap it or throttle it to make it so you are stuck with them or pay the price. the internet should be a utility at this point and not some commodity that is a privilege.

Greenlight in Wilson, NC is successful enough in getting Time Warner Cable in getting their big buddies together and a big business friendly and anti municipal Repuke House Rep or two to ram through some anti muni-Internet legislation.

to throttle the exchange of information we currently have @ our disposal via the internet.

This is threatening their ability censor and control the message.

I pay for DSL and get something that is only slightly faster than dial-up, but it is somewhat faster so I'm stuck paying the higher rate. Now they've added this insult to injury. Not to mention that if anyone complains to their personnel, AT&T retains the right to call it harassment and drop coverage altogether.

AT&T, go F yourself!

As soon as the big media congloms realize that people are buying non-volatile media and consuming it that way, rather than downloading or watching online, they will take on the telecoms.

interestedly,
Bright

We will probably reconsider which company we buy our internet service from.

When we switched from another provider to AT&T we were assured unlimited internet access. It's bait and switch. They baited us with the offer of unlimited and now want to switch their part of the bargain to limited internet service and for the same price.

That's not cool!!

How can we trust them.

2001, so I will never do business with them under any circumstances. When Southwestern Bell started using AT&T for long distance calls, I dropped SW Bell and started getting phone service from the local cable company. I will not deal with AT&T for any reason at all. I would do without the Net before I would deal with that company.

i know how much i download via bittorrent, which isn't much, itunes as well, but i gotta wonder how much bandwidth i'm blowing with starcraft 2 and world of warcraft.... :scared:

and bar corporations from it?

Must be a way to do that, isn't there?

Hi -- Erin Brockvitch arounde anywhere? Help!!

Overcharging their customers is an added benefit. Have your Congress critter explain why it is important to restrict free speech and access to information that might result in an informed electorate. Ask how much in bribes he/she accepts from telco lobbyists - opensecrets.org will put how much, and a little digging into the background of the lobbyist front organizations will let you know who's providing bribes in the form of campaign contributions to your Congress critter.

Lobbying by former Congressional staff and former Congress critters should be a capital offense.

A super seeder can fill a pipe faster than 3 netflix users in the same house.

I have UVerse through att for cable and internet. We will see what happens.... I know they just hit me with a $15.00 charge on the last day of my billing cycle because I went over my data plan on my cellphone! First time that has happened, and I have a wireless network at home which should be NO CHARGE for data.

Apparently my Scrabble addiction has gotten out of control :/

Annette

Maybe I'm missing something--but won't big corporations suffer the most with capping bandwidth? They would use
the Internet a great deal.

I'm assuming there would be differences in individual vs. business billing--but still. I'm surprised, in this day
and age, where the big corporations is king--that AT&T would even try this. Won't they piss off everyone that they'd
have to face at the DC cocktail parties?

I'm wondering if such a billing system is a gateway procedure--that opens the door to allowing them to eventually restrict
what we can and can't see?

Then again, maybe it's just further assault on those who don't have dispensable income. Now, you pay your $50 per month
and you're connected. If people have to pay more fees, those with less disposable income will find this expense harder
to stomach. This will end up restricting Internet access for many lower income groups--further widening the information gap.

Right now--you need a laptop and an ISP to have access to the Internet. That's a hefty expense for someone who is
homeless or low income. These caps seem to raise that bar even further--putting technology out of reach for many.

I'm guessing you mean for a company's employees to access the Internet, not for it to host servers or content. If this is the case, anything that's considered a "large" corporation generally partners with an RBOC (a baby Bell) or equivalent for a leased fiber line (or several). Typically, the connection speed is what's capped, not the bandwidth used (since there's an upper bound on this). If bandwidth is counted in the deal, it's typically measured in TB, depending on the number of employees who need access to the Internet. No truly large business buys Internet a-la-carte like consumers do.

Bottom line: this screws only residential consumers. Businesses have nothing to fear. Combined with a potential demise of network neutrality, this could open the door to a tiered Internet in which some sites are included in your plan and some are not (in the same way as channel tier pricing).

When in fact the republicans are looking only to feed more of our dollars to benefit corporations like AT&T, Verizon & Comcast along with the corporate profits, comes the censoring of progressive & liberal web sites in return, to help both the communication corporations and the republican fascist party pigs!

Republicans are trying desperately to overturn the new democratic FCC rules for a free internet and neutrality for ALL (especially assholes like John McCain) republicans want to get rid of net neutrality the republican congress just voted against Obama's FCC rulings to keep the corporations from overcharging and controlling Internet content!

Republicans want their corporations to be able charge and censor as much as they please - Using the bullshit "free market" as their mantra - which only and always hurts the consumers and our freedoms!!

it's planned, it's executing and because there are limited choices, we're screwed.

than in Europe.

I cannot imagine having something as slow as 2 or 5 mbps (98% here have broadband), and it is free in so many public areas.

sorry it took so long to respond....American internet you know

It is no different from your gas, electric or water service. The more you use, the more you pay.

I feel that the max limits set up as reasonable. 150 GB per month for DSL is quite generous. The limits are far lower in the rest of the world.

Why should people who use less subsidize people who use more?

In the examples you cite, you're paying for either a physical substance (gas, water) or energy that has to be generated.

But in the case of internet access, all you're paying for is the use of the pipes -- and once the pipes are in place, the cost of moving a few more GB over them is vanishingly small.

This is why it makes a certain amount of sense to pay more per month for a broadband connection. That money is theoretically going into laying more cable, upgrading to fiber optic, etc. (Though given how little the telecoms are actually putting into doing those things, we're being rooked even there.)

But once you pay for use of a certain size of pipe, there should be no limit on how much data you pump through it each month. It doesn't cost the telecoms any more, so they shouldn't be able to gouge you.

their capacity will always remain limited. When bandwidth is effectively free there is no incentive to limit one's usage. It is very easy for any consumer to use huge
amounts of bandwidth - just stream hi-def movies on several screens 24/7. Current infrastructure can't support everyone doing that. When maximum capacity is
reached everyone will experience a slowdown. To avoid that you can either incentivize consumers to limit their usage or invest in extra capacity. Or you can do both
by introducing a progressive fee structure when heavier users pay more and one can choose his cap according to his own needs. How would that be less fair than
an average customer consuming less than 10 Gb per month having to pay the same as a bandwidth hog using 500 Gb? Maybe after we build an infinite capacity
internet infrastructure and all investments are fully paid off the unlimited business model would make sense (as was pretty much the case until recently when total usage
lagged behind capacity). But can we be sure that even then some new needs and usage modes won't arise to exhaust the existing capacity? And how efficient it would
be to have invested in so much excess capacity which would remain idle? USA remains the only country in the world with cheap unlimited internet. It also lags behind
all other developed countries in internet infrastructure development. Could there be a correlation here?

is the assumption that the internet is a privately owned commodity. It is not. If a gallon of gas goes up to $10 a gallon, millions of people will use less and will therefore be less mobile and will suffer the attendant consequences of that. The very rich wouldn't even bat an eyelash at $10 gas. In fact a big slice of that price would go into their pockets.

Since when did we give a shit what the rest of the world does? Let's try universal health care and then we can talk about the fine example set by the rest of the world.

We subsidize each others consumption now. The wealthier you are the more you are subsidized. Your suggestion would merely exacerbate that inequity.

the means to deliver it to your house IS privately owned.

Let's say water was free in a community of 50 households. One household decides to have a golf course on its 23 acres and installs irrigation for fairways and greens, this counsuming 17,000% more water than any of the other 49 houses. The result is that the other 49 houses experience lower water pressure and thus a lower flow rate than they were enjoying before UNLESS the water company lays a much bigger pipe to the 50 household community. The cost of this large pipe is born by ALL 50 houselholds. Would that be fair even if the water was free?

Your astute analogy has resolved the issue. The entire internet should be publicly owned. In which case, the golf house would be told it could dig a well somewhere on its 23 acres. Analogies aside, if I remember my high school physics correctly, water pressure is a function of volume (and to a lesser degree temperature) i.e the guy drawing 17000% more water wouldn't decrease the pressure for the others unless more water was being removed than replenished from the source, in which case everyone's pressure would decline equally.

AT&T is not the bad guy here.

How did I manage to stay in the 44%? Why have I not heard of this before? Are people just bending over and taking this?

I truly am confused on this article.

The only other high speed option in my area is the cable company, and we switched from them years ago because they were horribad.

2%, according to AT&T, actually use enough to be billed extra for it.

I question that number. Are they also including those with like AT&T mobile phone data plans?

meegbear

This type of broadband internet I had the first couple of years I had internet.. Over a surtin ammout of broad usage the speed go down to a smaller limit.. And I had to wait to next month to get the whole line back.. Today I have a great line pay a fix price for the whole Month, the line is by the way FAR better than I might need, but it is allways good to have some extra line when needed..

But of course, i live in a European nation, where broadband have been some of a ability that we take for granted over here.. And the big player just dosen't have that power as we also have some regulary rules in place to stop the big players sqeese the users to mutch..

I for one find this fishy, really fishy.. Mostly becouse I fear this is a way for "powers to be" to restrict knowlegde about the rest of the world, and even to stiffle information that are dangrous..

As others here have pointed out, cable net useres have been going down the last couple of years, as the internet are given more ability than the current cable net providers are willing to give.. More and more americans are not happy been told the story they are been told by the cable providers, and is making way to another information, that is maybe the opposite to what the big players want you to belive.. Knowlegde is dangrous you know..

Diclotican

When you look at how much junk any web page loads which is not the desired content, that is eating into our allotment, right?

We are paying to be spammed!

Anyone remember when the main selling point for pay cable was that there would be no ads?

will solve this problem for you.

Unlimited internet does not exist (without costing an arm and a leg) anywhere in the world outside the USA. The reason it existed in the US
was that until recently (before Hulu and Netflix) Americans simply didn't use that much bandwidth. 150 gigs is a huge amount - 100 movies
in high resolution. Most casual users will easily fit under 10 gig cap. In reality, unlimited business model is grossly unfair towards most regular
users who are forced to pay the same fees as the carefree bandwidth hogs clogging the net with their traffic, and most people pay to subsidize
those very few power users. When bandwidth is effectively free, as any resource, it gets wasted instead of being used most efficiently, skewing
the incentives for investing in additional infrastructure. That's one of the reasons USA is lagging all other developed countries in internet
infrastructure development. Here in Australia you can choose your cap from a series of differently priced options according to your needs.
Why is that unfair? When you exceed your cap they don't charge you extra, they simply slow your connection down to 256 kbps, still acceptable
for e-mail and some browsing, but not good for streaming. You can immediately switch to a higher cap plan and get the full speed restored.
The highest cap (before going unlimited) for Telstra customers is 200 gigs per month. I have that and never used more than 50 gigs while
doing few hours of streaming daily. I do see a problem if they plan to charge punitive fees for over usage instead of slowing down the connection.
That would be a pain to monitor one's usage constantly, and a huge moneymaker for ISPs giving them an incentive to offer smaller cap plans
and to charge exorbitant fees for extra traffic.

Most people, myself included, have no idea what X Gb amounts to as far as our everyday lives.

Perhaps there is a chart someone knows about which details this.

150 GB/ month cap means you can watch between 80-85 streaming movies a month.

they just tell us there's a cap, with no real-life scenarios such as what you have pointed out. It's what makes us suspicious.

With a few exceptions, we can't.

You have made some very strong assertions here and you are actually wrong.

Australia has draconian internet facilities - so attempting to project Australia's sub-standard position onto the rest of the earth is unfair, whats more it is a reasonable assumption that you don't know every countries internet position, and as someone who is a web specialist who has lived and worked around the world it is also obvious that you are not very familiar with how things work - especially in asia.

Japan actually had uncapped internet for a long, long time - whats more their internet (like much of asia) is not measured in Megabytes like Australia and the US - but in Gigs per second - yes GIGS. Think about that.

Further Australia is introducing fibre optic to the home for everyone - this is not putting us in front, but merely catching up with much of Asia. Fibre optic has the capacity to carry such huge quantities of data that putting a cap on it becomes virtually nonsensical. Currently the fibre networks in place are so massive that 99% of it is called "Dark" - there is no light in it as it is over capacity.

Most countries, including Austalia also offer unlimited internet. Did you know this ? It is th opposite of what you are asserting.

I had unlimited internet at 25 meg in the UK 5 years ago - I had unlimited PHONE, yes mobile internet in the UK for 14 quid a month as well - 5 YEARS AGO.

I want the internet to be unlimited, those who don't are not using it to its full potential yet.

I am a web developer, software developer and have been doing so for well over a decade.

Japan and most other countries, you just have to pay for it through the nose. You can also get much cheaper capped plans in most of those
countries. That is the difference with the US, where until now unlimited and cheap was the norm. You simply couldn't get a cheaper capped
service. And you didn't really want to, since unlimited was already very cheap. That was fine as long as actual usage trailed behind capacity.
But developing fiberoptics infrastructure to meet the growing demand requires a massive investment and US government (unlike Australian)
is not willing to pick up the tab. So it is up to ISPs themselves to pay for extra bandwidth. They have no other choice but to pass on the cost
onto their customers. If they are to continue offering only unlimited to all, everyone will have to pay equally and much more than they are paying
now, while not everyone really needs the higher bandwidth enough to be willing to pay extra. Surely, those who use a lot of internet as you do
("to its high potential" as you say) will always want it to be unlimited, because in this case their usage is subsidized by much more numerous
ordinary (slow) users, who are getting screwed in this arrangement. Such desire, while easily understandable, is self-serving and has nothing
to do with fairness.

That is why I don't like it that much.

Typically in the UK you can't have "unlimited" unless you pay lots of money but there's a good number of providers - even the main player BT - that provide service best known as "no pre set limit" plans, but put in a "fair usage" policy, meaning that if you're deemed to be using too much and hogging all the bandwidth then your speed will be reduced.

But here in NC we have two choices for Internet - Telephone Company or Cable Company. Not much choice otherwise. In some places because of the way the infrastructure is set up you might have one or the other. Lots of places you can only have dialup, where a couple of houses down the road you can get highspeed.

Yes, there are places with WiMax ... but it's not as fast as anything that the TelCo or CableCo can do.

Mark.

http://stopthecap.com/2011/04/07/special-report-unlimited-internet-access-is-the-global-norm-not-the-exception/

Not only are unlimited options available in most nations, they are the norm in quite a few. Furthermore a great many of them are faster than our connections, sometimes by orders of magnitude. The issue here is that the infrastructure is terrible, and no one wants to pay to upgrade it even though they could easily afford to do so. We are being squeezed for profits, plain and simple, plus for AT&T there is the added benefit of driving people away from streaming video over the internet. Unless of course it's THEIR streaming video service.

Bandwidth is not a finite commodity. Only the pipe which delivers it is. Upgrading the capability of that pipe as technology advances and internet habits adapt accordingly should be a normal cost of doing business as a service provider, and they make MORE than enough profit for that to be the case. They just don't want to.

What does it even mean? They don't want to develop a profitable business? Are they just too lazy? Why don't they want to?
If that's the root cause, then you are really screwed. How do you force them to "want to"? The reason they "don't want to"
is that they are not sure they can convince enough people to sign up to recover the costs, which are more significant in
the US due to its immense size and relatively sparse population. Australia is facing the similar problem and here the government
had to assume the risk. It is unthinkable that US government will do the same. So ultimately, the customers will have to pay
one way or the other. The only question is whether every user will pay the same regardless of how much he uses or needs -
what the cap-haters seem to advocate - or some more flexible fee structure will allow more casual users to avoid getting
screwed on that deal. That's all.

Here in Japan, most Internet service for personal/home computers is unlimited use for a fixed rate. Average rate in my area-- the equivalent of about $60/month for broadband.

I can live without downloading lots of stuff, but I worry about ISPs cutting people off if the government goes nuts, etc.

Does anyone know if the days of yore stuff where you could connect directly via phone lines still exists? Slow, but access, and possibly not clobberable.

what a company is doing, I can drop their service and switch to another without penalties very quickly.

If an internet service is capping your bandwith, I suggest switching to a competitor that does not cap bandwith immediately if you can, or ASAP.

Don't support bad companies that limit freedom.

When I had dial-up it was slow and had no caps. Then I got the idea to get a satellite internet which I had to pay $500.00 for equipment and installation and $99.00 monthly - it had caps of 4gigs per month and was so unreliable I gave it a boot. Then I got a wireless usb card, which was cheaper($60.00 mthly), but same crap, it was 4gigs monthly. Now I have the best one that I have ever had and it's cable internet and pay like $35.00 mthly. I have no idea what my caps are? I don't use it to watch TV because I have cable TV.

I guess people are trying to cut corners by watching TV on the internet. I have TV, internet and phone all bundled.

:argh:

but capping internet access is going to hurt a lot of non-profit and educational facilities. There's a lot of people out there relying in free internet access for homework and many people who use the library for research and job search.

The cable company doesn't offer the channels I want at any price.
I can get some of them over the internet.

The speed of dial up *was* the cap. If you wanted a faster line, you had to bond modems. This worked for ISP's and consumers because very few people had the money, or means, to pay for 23 modems worth of bandwidth into their house... 23 phone lines, at, say, $20 a month = $460 a month.

Since people didn't spend as much time online, ISP's figured out they could get the capacity to service those 23 modems, and sell it to three different people (or more, I've seen 10:1, and even 50:1) at once... and only charge a third (or whatever) of the bandwidth cost.

Fast forward several generations of technology, and the problem today persists, where consumers *think* they're paying for one product, but they're really buying something else.

A free internet is a free society. CorpAmerica cant allow that.

Tell me when you are ready to fight.

and watch them suck the life out of it to turn a profit. Watch the benefit that is spread across millions of people slowly dwindle to a small class of people. Happens on everything they get their hands on that rightfully should be in the hands of the public - be it water, air, wilderness, energy, healthcare, education, etc. In the hands of an unfettered capitalist, it all goes to shit.

That have been in place since broadband started getting big, because their customers are screaming bloody murder and deserting providers who don't remove caps or increase the allocation substantially. My provider spontaneously upped me from 50GB monthly to 1,000GB (a terabyte) -- which means effectively unlimited.

The rates are still quite high (I pay the equivalent of $130/month for my home connection, but it also includes free phone throughout Australia to non-mobile numbers), but the prices haven't gone up (down, actually) as the relaxed caps have come into service.

An example of competition working?

Thanks for the thread, meegbear.

I don't mind caps on bandwidth.

But they better give me the option that if my bandwidth is reached, it turns itself off.

I do not want to have to worry every second I'm on the internet whether or not I have exceeded my monthly allotment and am racking up fees. I'll cancel or go back to dial-up before I put up with that.