Comcast May Raise Prices On "Internet Hogs" 578
lunartik writes: "According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, Comcast may raise rates on users of their @home service who download a significant amount of audio or video files. Comcast claims that 1 percent of users use 30 percent of capacity. With the flat fee possibly flying out the window for users who utilize the service's speed, one wonders if US broadband is heading the same way as the Aussies." Time Warner has said much the same, and the spiral has probably just begun.
About Time Warner ... (Score:5, Informative)
Bell Sympatico (Score:2, Informative)
The price is enough to make me look at other options like dsl.ca that is still offering 1Mbit service for a flat rate of $35 although who knows how long it will last.
I don't disagree that flat rate pricing causes the majority to subsidize the few but I think that 5GB is far to little. I can use that in a month easily and I don't even do any P2P.
Cable plans are matching DSL plans (Score:4, Informative)
In general you paid the same for DSL vs Cable but got more with the cable service. Well, that's changing now. Cable companies have noticed that they are basically giving away a T1 worth of bandwidth for $50/month. They see how the phone company can offer high-end business DSL for $250/month and want to cash in... so they are copying the DSL's price scheme.
Charter Communications is my current cable provider. Their plans are something like this:
256Kb Down / 64Kb Up - $30
768Kb Down / 128Kb Up - $40
1Mb Down / 256Kb Up - $60
1.5Mb Down / 384Kb up - $100
These are very similar to verizon/at&t/etc DSL packages. I figure most of the other cable providers will switch to a similar plan soon. They save bandwidth, make more money and the only people to really complain are the 1% who are causing all the bandwidth problems in the first place. That 1% doesn't have any alternative except for DSL, which has the same pricing plans... and we know they won't go back to dial-up.
Re:Disgraceful (Score:1, Informative)
1920 / 4 = 480 songs.
(Where 4 is the average number of megabytes of an Mp3..)
Oh, and by the way.. IT DOES NOT COST COMCAST MORE MONEY IF I USE MY FULL CAPPED (150k/downstream) BANDWIDTH.
If it really did, they would have accepted my offer to pay more an uncapped connection...
Re:similar logic should apply to driving (Score:5, Informative)
Equally so, if I only drive 100 miles per month, I should pay a pro-rated insurance fee
Our insurance company asks how far we live from work for exactly that reason. Our rates would be slightly higher if we lived 20 miles from work instead of 2.
As far as the internet usage goes, the same thing. The isp that I use for my email account has a 5 dollar a month e-mail only account, which I've used for years. You get something like 5 hours of dialup service a month with that. Or I could pay 10 for 40 hours and some web space or 20 for unlimited. I believe AOL has a similar 5 hour a month plan as well as a bring-your-own-connnection plan for people with cable modems. Most ISP's have low end, low hour accounts.
Ting!! Your wish has been granted.
Re:A very simple question: (Score:3, Informative)
A "Mom & Pop" ISP probably pays some level of transfer fees, but the big boys (like the ones in this story) have dedicated links to peering partners that they either build themselves or lease from a major telco. I don't know much about "paid peering" (which isn't peering at all) but I think that is generally at a flat rate as well.
The economics at this level work a lot differently than your DSL or cable modem. At this level the more data you move the more attractive you are as a peering partner, because you can provide a short route to your not-so-little chunk of the internet.
-Peter
Re:Easy Solution. (Score:5, Informative)
This is when you do a 180 and screw your customers because you never had a viable business plan to begin with. Sorry, but the warez kiddie bought your service because of how you offered it to him. May your customers leave for a company with a working business plan and you can have the T1 all to yourself.
Wow, the lack of knowledge here is sad. (Score:2, Informative)
1. Bandwidth costs money.
2. This money must come from the users of an ISP.
2. If you use more bandwidth, you cost more money, and your ISP thus has the right to charge you more.
However:
4. Bandwidth does not cost $0.10 per MB, as many ISPs are planning to charge for overuse. Most of these ISPs get it for between $0.50 and $1.00 per GB.
5. Because most of the infrastructure required by your ISP is already there, extra bandwidth use does not require an ISP to pay for a large amount of additional equipment, or costs other than that charged for the actual bandwidth itself.
From this we can conclude that:
7. A markup on the price of bandwidth of 100 to 200 times is excesive, even with any additional costs an ISP incures.
8. Legislation on ISP bandwidth pricing schemes is quite likely going to become necessary in the future, if the Internet has any hope of living on in the fashion in which it exists today.
Re:A very simple question: (Score:1, Informative)
Traffic shaping is expensive to do. Call Cisco and ask for prices on routers that are able to do this at all.
Ireland equivalent precident is interesting: (Score:4, Informative)
Then they just kicked off the people that were using it the most. They were allowed to get away with it, but the backlash from the disconnected customers (myself included) was high.
Here is the coverage on Wired from the incident:
Wired coverage of Ireland's flat-rate ISP kicking off its frequent users [wired.com]
Re:A very simple question: (Score:4, Informative)
At any given point during the day, the ISP has a certain number of customers using bandwidth. Not every customer is using bandwidth at the exact same time. The ratio is roughly 20 to 1. That means at any given second, 1 out of 20 customers is using bandwidth (I work for a DSL provider, that number is accurate for us.. but it'll vary per provider).
Bandwidth hogs throw off that ratio. They abuse the system. If the ISP had to treat all of it's customers as "potential bandwidth hogs", they would need to account for a ratio of 1:1, instead of 20:1. They would literally have to raise the cost of your service by 2000 percent.
Capping is the other option, but again, the cable company would have to cut your bandwidth by 95%... because you want to change the ratio from 20:1 to 1:1.
So which is it? Would you like to pay $1000/mo instead of $50/mo? Or would you like to be capped at 15 kbit/s instead of 300?
If you don't like it.. tough shit.. go start your own ISP, and see how much you'd have to charge in order to give your users the ability to max out their pipe 24/7.
Re:why not allow us to run servers for add'l fee (Score:1, Informative)
Assholes.
Re:why not allow us to run servers for add'l fee (Score:3, Informative)
Until they have cable systems that were designed from the start of internet, and have symmetric upstream/downstream, the are going to restrict servers.
Re:Disgraceful (Score:3, Informative)
If they're trying to be profitable, why do they offer all of this junk?
Because it's locally hosted.
Connecting your youse to the cable modem exchange thingy is easy; they already own the cables, and just have to put data through them. This costs them essentially nothing.
The cost is the connection from the exchange to the internet. They pay for it by usage, and hence want you to use it as little as possible.
If they get a reuters newsfeed and some other junk for a home page, they can put it on a server at the exchange, without having to use the expensive internet connection. This saves them money.
Of course, this relies on people using thier portal site. I know I don't use my ISP's portal. But the majority of users probably do use the home page.
Michael