I don’t want them playing with my numbers.
LOL you guys have still got it good. In Canada, the major telco companies want to implement 60GB caps and charge $2/GB overage. :looney:
I’ve always been running on a 60gb limit with Bell. Didn’t know my limit until I went over one time and parents got upset lol. Now I check how much bandwidth I used before I go download something big…
I’m sure you AT&T users can check your current usage on the AT&T website in one way or another.
yeah, but it got shot down awhile ago. We got angry enough that they backed off
AT&T will lose enough people that other ISP’s will back off from imposing caps, for fear of losing $$$ when people switch.
If you do happen to go over your limit, there is a thing that you can turn on which activates “emergency internet” which allows you to check email and very basic web pages. The catch? Its slower than 56k. I really didn’t want to believe all this internet cap crap until my friend that sells this bullshit started telling me how it works. Hell some AT&T dude came to my house trying to install that crap yesterday. If its true that Verizon has cheaper internet and no cap I’m totally going to switch over to them. Comcast tends to “cap” your internet by just flat out not working for a couple of days then say “ohhh sorry someone turned off your internet by mistake LOLs!”
Where can you… actually complain about this? Censorship already has gotten through [well censorship in terms of trying to shutdown downloading websites] with people petitioning and what not and it passed. Oh man you know who is going to take a huge hit? Steam! They are starting to be more and more about digital downloading your video games. How much will it suck to spend nearly all your bandwidth for one game download?
yeah same here, my landlord got pissed once cause he got charged like 100 bucks extra one month cause we were so much over the limit haha. Didn’t stop me from downloading though.
well guess i’m glad i didn’t switch to uverse lol
Verizon has it’s own problems though. You’re never going to see the speeds you are paying for during peak hours when everybody gets home and turns on Netflix, everything will slow to a crawl. FIOS is better, but that really depends on how many people in your area use it.
I have Verizon, they used to be great and Comcast sucked… then everybody moved over to Verizon and they went to crap, oh well.
Other ISPs have “soft” caps, they will throttle the hell out of you if they feel like it. You can’t do much about it.
Netflix really doesn’t have a leg to stand on honestly. Netflix offered a product that they damn well knew we didn’t have the backbone for, and then threw a hissy fit and demanded that all the other companies fork over money to upgrade things for them. Not to mention this product actively kills one of the main products the other people are selling, Netflix are jackasses.
Netflix "Hi, Comcast? We are trying to sell a product that will kill your cable TV, and we are going to run it over your Network"
Comcast "Uhh, that is actually going to jam up and royally mess with our network, we can’t really support that, you are also going to kill one of our main profit streams"
Netflix (throws tempertantrum) "Listen, I’m a special fairy and you guys are going to pay out of your own pocket to upgrade everything just for us so we can kill of your cable"
Comcast “Um, no, STFU assholes”
And Netflix has pulled this stunt with various people, they keep getting slapped down in court.
They can’t do anything. Netflix marched into things with the idea that they would offer a service that they knew would wreak chaos on the ISPs and then started suing the crap out of them. They got smacked down for being dicks. Offers were made that Netflix could pay the ISPs to help mitigate the costs and work something out, and the ISPs tried to block them. The end result is that it’s been settled that Netlix can’t demand that the ISPs bow to their will, and the ISPs can’t block them. And Netflix has no leg to stand on, they can’t demand Verizon and Comcast pay to put in place items that will actively kill off their TV distribution channels, but Netflix is more than free to get into the game of being an ISP and do things there way.
And they are, but their abilities are actually rather limited. There are a whole ton of ISPs and various backbone providers. Since a lot data crosses multiple networks the impact a single one can have is fairly limited, it also takes a fair amount of time. AT&Ts cellular coverage has gotten a lot better, and many ISPs now get you faster to your backbone. But none of this really matters when practically over night Netflix created a situation where “come 7pm, every computer is constantly streaming shows”.
It needs to be reworked, and something is being done. But Netflix decided that were going to drive tanks through a crowded city all night 7pm to midnight and then through a shit fit when they were told the streets weren’t built for it.
Am I reading this right as well, the grace period is a limited time thing as well for the first few months they are implementing the cap or is that meant to be permanent?
Either way AT&T seems to be trying to just fuck shit up on a telecommunications scale, first data caps, then buying T-Mobile and now this shit. I doubt I use 250 GB in a month but shit I just started watching more shit on Netflix, along with other recreational activities and shit the family does online, this is a scary prospect.
The government stepped in and told the CRTC to overturn their decision or they (the government) will intervene. The telco companies are appealing that decision. It’s probably gonna get ugly.
yeah, ugly for the telecomm companies. All the government has to do is allow more telecomm companies in (which COULD fuck us, seeing as we have laws about allowing foreign owned telecomm companies into the country), which is something our current oligopoly has feared for awhile (it almost happened when they introduced texting fees going BOTH ways).
Our population is too small to get nickel and dimed, and at least our government is smart enough to recognize this (not to mention we dont have an ass backwards two party system, even though it seems that way)
The thing is that U-verse whores bandwidth. Your thinking “muahaha I got 250 GB. Yay for U-verse” but your TV USES BANDWIDTH! As well as your land line phone [but I doubt it eats up much].
So is the “unlimited” internet simply going to go away? Or is it just going to have an insane premium package now? Because right now universities are going to be paying for SOOOOO much for their internet packages right now if there is limited bandwidth.
A University account would not be on the traditional way you pay for an ISP. They’d probably have an OC-3 (or OC-12) and multiple T1’s as well for redundancy. These require special hardware and are not subject to the same rules as the connections you or I use.
You can probably get a T1 to your house if you care enough, it will cost you though.
not to mention the lower more economical T1 lines are hot ass for bandwidth allowances.
ATT is full of shit. They told me I can not get faster internet because of the lines yet my friend who is on the same lines who lives a block away has it.
and you get more speed through comcast or AT&T than you would with a T1 line. T1 is only 1.544 Mbit/s line rate. aka you’d need a T3 line to really get speeds superior to those through cable or dsl.
That doesn’t really mean much. I live in a group of 4 apartment buildings, same building management for all of them. For our choice of ISP we have Comcast, Verizon DSL or FIOS… the speeds vary per building. Because the actual gear in the buildings varies wildly. Only two of them are wired for FIOS, and the DSL speeds change per building depending on when Verizon put everything in, so you can’t all get the best package.
Comcast is pretty “equal” among the buildings, till Verizon broke Comcasts crap install FIOS in one of the buildings.
For the longest time I just said f-it and got a T1 because Comcast throttles you, FIOS wasn’t in my building, and the wiring Verizon had was god knows how old so I could only get the worst package from them.
Yeah a T1 is pretty ideal the low end ones here start at about 289 a month but you’re looking at bit over 300 once phone, VPN is tossed in. Plus the connections are rock solid stable and the hardware is a lot better. If you have roommates chip in and go for it.
You can always have multiple lines, which is normally what’s done. The main point is you take yourself out of the normal pricing/screwing game offered by the various ISP’s in your area, and it’s a ton more reliable.
It’s only for the internet.
And comcast has been doing this for years. Where was the mock outrage for that?
T1 is slow. I have 15 Mb/s at home, or 1.875 MB/s, and I have seen about an average of peak 1.6+ MB/s for 40$ a month. At my work we have a T1 and it’s fucking slow for an office of 50 people, no more than 300 KB/s, and it apparently costs too much.
Anyways bandwidth caps are easy to track, but I wonder if they’ll be legally enforceable after a year.
Yes, a T1 is typically going to be slower than a DSL connection, but that’s not the point of it.
A t1 is a regulated connection. It has to be up 100% of the time, and they have to give you that speed. You have no such options with a DSL or a cable connection because it’s unregulated. So if for whatever reason, even distance to the carrier, you don’t get that speed or it’s down, well you are just straight SOL.
Which helps address this problem…
Schools, business, what have you are not going to be affected by this. Because they are running on regulated connections, and they pay through the teeth to keep this the case. An ISP can freely screw over it’s DSL or cable subscribers at will, they can’t do that sort of thing to people buying a regulated line from them.
If you want out of the normal internet voodoo game, you need to look at services that are not DSL/Cable/FIOS and into something where they can’t pull that sort of crap.