Data Caps in US
Tushon
I'm scared, CoachAlexandria, VA Icrontian
Just to be certain, the only company that currently has data caps on home broadband is AT&T, right? I'm having to switch from 25/25 FiOS to "20/2" Time Warner (blech) and want to make sure I don't need to be careful. The most recent stuff I found (~May 11) indicated that was when AT&T had implemented their caps and no one else had done anything since then. Am I correct?
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Time Warner has discussed, tested, and was forced to abandon their attempts to cap after they tried to cap high bandwidth cable customers at a maximum of 50GB/mo which cost an additional $40. They have not tried to implement caps since, but are still discussing it.
Comcast is 250GB/month with no overage permitted, period. They will and do disconnect your Internet the second you go over cap for the remainder of your billing period (sometimes longer), and extend it to a minimum 1 year if you go over cap two or more times; there is no way to appeal, and they will try to continue billing you for it. Their "usage meter" is known to be wildly incorrect (only counting download) while they base restriction on both upload and download usage.
Comcast continues in their attempts to deceive prospective customers through their "Xfinity" rebranding and higher speeds. (Xfinity 105Mbit service? 250GB hard cap.)
Charter is a pretty similar deal; hard 250GB cap for top tier, lower caps for lower tiers. Base cap is 100GB/mo; max for 60Mbit service is 250GB/mo. Charter also is implementing a combination DPI/Throttling scheme where heavy users will be throttled to undisclosed levels regardless of whether or not they're near the cap. In practice, customers are seeing throttling for using what they're paying for with the Ultra60 tier.
AT&T caps are varied by service tier; the top tier is 250GB/month for U-Verse with FTTN+Coax. DSL customers are capped at 150GB/month. Every GB over rounded up from the first megabyte OVER the cap is an additional $1. (Thus if you use 199.1GB on your DSL, you will have an additional $50 charge for that month.) Like Comcast, their "meter" is known to be wildly inaccurate, and often lags days behind.
Optimum Online (Cablevision) also caps customers, but does not disclose the amount at which customers are capped or whether or not a customer is even capped. Instead, customers who "exceed" the "cap" (which is in and of itself a fiction) find their bandwidth throttled to <100K/s download varying widely for a period of 4-48 hours, seemingly entirely at random. Customers who pay extra in the belief they will have higher caps or no caps, actually, still get capped. Again; the specifics are completely undisclosed to customers and OOL refuses to disclose details. Basically, this is more Packet Shaping/Throttling than cap, but when you lose >50% of the bandwidth you're paying for, does it really matter how we split hairs?
Cox also has caps, currently largely unenforced, which are among the most confusing out there. The reason being, is, well, see here. Yep. Varies by region AND by head end. Caps for Cleveland West Side are actually not as documented; instead we get saddled with Omaha's 250GB policy. Cleveland East Side gets a 400GB policy. Those are for their highest level of service only of course - the essential package of 3Mbit/384Kbit (basically, Netflix streaming) gets capped at 50GB. But again, enforcement is very lax and there is no overage charge at this time.
Windstream is widely known to employ throttling; details are sketchy. However, I live near a major Windstream service area. The throttling however, is believed to be related primarily to your percentage used of the local backhaul as the backhaul approaches congestion. However, there's no details available.
Currently with no disclosed caps but other extremely objectionable policies is Wide Open West. Wide Open West admits to performing Deep Packet Inspection including interception of NXDOMAIN returns, and interception, logging and JavaScript and Java injection into HTTP and HTTPS traffic, but does not disclose this to customers. Having been sued for doing this once before and passing information to undisclosed third parties (see NebuAd,) they continue to refuse to disclose what data is collected or what is done with it. I have written the local Systems Manager and others about this, and still have not received a response other than admitting to doing so.
So basically, just about everyone has caps. This doesn't cover other smaller ones like Frontier, Knology, or regionals, or ISPs rated as "barely functional" independent of caps like Qworst/CenturyTel. All of them are actively engaged in a race to the bottom - they want to decrease quality and quantity of service as much as they can, so that your options are "crap service" and "slightly less crap service" - while jacking prices through the roof.
AT&T caps FTTN customers at 250GB/month with $1/GB over rounding from the first KB over cap.
http://www.engadget.com/2011/03/13/atandt-will-cap-dsl-u-verse-internet-and-impose-overage-fees/
http://gizmodo.com/5075831/att-monthly-bandwidth-caps-are-here
http://www.nypost.com/p/entertainment/tv/at_caps_broadband_use_eNenqDM2qLFBQvyD60SwxJ
I'm in PR. Our company is Claro, formerly Verizon, formerly, local telco.
Mediacom throttles after 250GB/month on 20/2 and 12/1 plans (down to 2-5mbps)
the 50/5 plan is on separate nodes and so far it seems they just leave us alone (I'm well over 250GB this month and have seen no throttling)
Yeah, which is super confusing, because it's not clear whose or what policies are applied or whether or not there are or will be policies.
It's also confusing because of the way it all goes together and the contentious relationship between former owners and current owners. Who are still major bandwidth providers due to the limited cables to PR. Plus the current policy climate which includes "behavior-based throttling" among other 'goodies' and a rather competitive environment in some ways (multiple layers of resale, multiple resellers, more wireless options than in the US.)
http://blog.streamingmedia.com/the_business_of_online_vi/2009/03/estimates-on-what-it-costs-netflixs-to-stream-movies.html
If the typical movie to Xbox360 is 1800MB, that works out to about 13MB/minute (0.23Mbit/s or about 230Kbit/s.) The average movie runs around 130 minutes.
So a user on the lowest tier DSL service from AT&T (768/128Kbit) can watch Netflix Standard Definition movies. However, if they watch 2 movies every Saturday and Sunday, that's 80 movies a month, or 144GB/month. However, they claim the "average" user uses only 18GB/month - that's 10 Netflix Standard Definition movies.
High Definition is double that usage. So 79 SD and 1 HD movie? You're over your DSL cap. Yet your 768K DSL has no trouble streaming these. And if you do anything other than watch these Netflix movies? (e.g. World of Warcraft which consumes a good chunk of bandwidth, and gods help you if you play SW:ToR which streams >50% of it's content.) You are 100% guaranteed to be over the 150GB cap. Which is the best demonstration of how ridiculous and purely punitive these caps are. They are designed to do nothing more than inflate profits for telcos and cable companies, while even septupling Netflix's bandwidth costs, the average movie would only increase to $0.25USD.
"Bandwidth is cheap and only getting cheaper" has been a truism in the Internet since 1991. Now the incumbents having rebuilt their monopoly and oligopoly power are trying to change this by hook or by crook. They realize that they now have providers by the balls - consider Steam. If you purchase one typical AAA title on Steam per month, you lose 10-16GB of your cap just installing it. Nevermind the 200MB+ of updates a month (NS2 is currently averaging around 1GB+ an update; if I was capped, I would quit life.) Nobody is going to go back to going to Blockbuster or Best Buy, especially since they STILL have to do the Steam or EA Origin dance anyway.
Forgive me if I have misread your post, but shouldn't 2*2=4 movies per weekend, 4*4=16 (on average 4 weekends in a month). That's 16 movies a month, not 80...
I can say with full confidence that they do not do it the second you go over. I've been over more than once since we moved into the house and haven't experienced a single issue.
Do I suspect they may do this to some customers? Yes, but most reports I've heard involve people who consistently break the cap by large quantities (aka almost 300-400GB of download in consecutive months). I'm sure it varies by location and how often you show up on their radar.
I am by no means a fan of caps, but hyperbole is a bit much.
Hrm, I know I had the math right, but you're right about the description being wrong. (This happens a lot at the moment; I'm up to my eyeballs in financials.)
Try this: 2 people watching 1 movie per night 5 days a week, 2 people watching 2 per night 2 days a week.
2 * 1 * 5 * 4 = 40
2 * 2 * 2 * 4 = 32
Total: 72 (or roughly 80 accounting for TV shows, etc.)
72 * 1.8GB = 129.6GB not accounting for overhead, meter rounding up, etcetera. Again, that's watching nothing but Standard Definition and likely with some quality drops in the middle of it. Each High Definition movie is roughly 1.75x a Standard Definition movie, thus, if you spend all weekend watching HD movies only?
32 * 3.2GB = 102.4GB = 70% of your AT&T cap is gone.
This of course excludes absolutely ALL other activity including the Netflix browser, any previews, any other Internet use at all, and so on. That's only accounting for the movies themselves.
This is incorrect; it varies by region. Not all regions have the automated disconnect implemented yet. Local has a fully automated disconnect system, which has proven to disconnect people at 250GB +-5GB. The official policy regardless, is that at 250.1GB, you are to be disconnected for the remainder of the billing period. Any amount at or over 250GB is "excessive use and is a violation of the Policy."
This is not hyperbole; this is official Comcast policy. If you wish to disagree about the facts as stated by Comcast, they're the people to take it up with. Those are the facts as presented by Comcast, and "Comcast's determination of the data consumption for Service accounts is final."
In other words, their decision is final, there is no appeal, there is no complaint process. If Comcast decides to disconnect you permanently for using 251GB 3 months in a row, that is that. You are disconnected and you have absolutely no recourse.
Comcast also "reserve the right to terminate the Service provided to any customer or user who is either found to infringe third party copyright or other intellectual property rights, including repeat infringers, or who Comcast, in its sole discretion, believes is infringing these rights. Comcast may terminate the Service at any time with or without notice for any affected customer or user." In other words, if NBC complains to Comcast that you're Torrenting episodes of 30 Rock a week after airing, Comcast may decide to simply disconnect you, and again, you have no recourse. There is no burden of proof; Comcast's official policy is that they are judge jury and executioner.
I think you missed the second part of my reply:
I wasn't suggesting that they don't do this period, just that it's not like that everywhere. Your statement suggested that it was already like that. I haven't experienced the issue yet, thankfully.
Should people be wary? Yes. Is that the case in my locality (and from what I've heard Alexandria, VA with Prag and Annes)? No.
Why are you leaving 25/25 FiOS?