Broadband Providers Cap Monthly Usage

[Capper]

At one time, the word "unlimited" meant unlimited. Sprint's mobile broadband service is the latest to abandon the term and the principle in favor of a monthly cap designed to keep their heaviest users from overwhelming their network. But Sprint isn't alone: its two 3G competitors also cap usage, and two wireline broadband operators are testing explicit caps as well.

In the earliest days of broadband, service was either heavily capped, with ridiculously low limits--I recall DSL plans that had 1 GB monthly downstream limits for business-grade offerings--or totally uncapped.

As Internet bandwidth has become laughably cheap, most of the caps came off. But that was before YouTube, peer-to-peer file sharing, and digital movie downloads hit.Now, the idea of capped service with metered rates, stern warnings, or cancellations above a monthly limit are fully in fashion.

For the last few years, companies like Comcast and Verizon's wired broadband division have warned users about excessive downloads, degraded their service, or canceled their accounts, often with little recourse, and sometimes denying it all the while.

Broadband Providers Cap Monthly Usage - Yahoo! News

I just recently noticed that Cox Internet has implemented limits on our accounts......not only does $19.99 get you the real basic internet speeds, but it also limited you to 4GB of downloads each month, and 1GB of uploads each month.....thats some pretty weak shit.

[polobunny]

Originally Posted by Capper

Broadband Providers Cap Monthly Usage - Yahoo! News

I just recently noticed that Cox Internet has implemented limits on our accounts......not only does $19.99 get you the real basic internet speeds, but it also limited you to 4GB of downloads each month, and 1GB of uploads each month.....thats some pretty weak shit.

That's cheap, though.
It's ridiculous. They can't support their plans properly. I've been using peer 2 peer applications since ages. Used to be unlimited with my company too. Now it's 100GB upload/download combined per month. To some it may appear huge. To someone like me it's less than 1 third of what I used to do.
It came like that, one day. POW, 100GB. Suck it up. You give over $100 bucks to a corporation for cable tv, cable internet, added channels whatever, phone service and at any time, they change what you signed for 5 years.
However, if you break the contract because it doesn't suit you anymore, you pay fees for this and that...

[Capper]

Cox Communications - Digital Video | High Speed Internet | Digital Telephone

I was actually going to switch to a slightly cheaper package, but the customer service rep linked me to this page buried deep within their site that spells out what the packages really are, its not just speed differences....they don't tell you about the bandwidth limits, but they will bill you out the ass if you go over your limits.

[polobunny]

Originally Posted by Capper

Cox Communications - Digital Video | High Speed Internet | Digital Telephone

I was actually going to switch to a slightly cheaper package, but the customer service rep linked me to this page buried deep within their site that spells out what the packages really are, its not just speed differences....they don't tell you about the bandwidth limits, but they will bill you out the ass if you go over your limits.

Vidéotron : Internet : Extreme High-Speed Internet : Features
$1.50 per additional gigabyte, no billing limit. It used to be 30 max additional billing if I recall correctly.
Price is for first month, after it's $75/mo. @_@

[Capper]

Funny how they busted out comcast for this, while all these other ISPs are quietly doing the same thing.

[Zambini]

Hmm....
so the 2gb transferred since this afternoon....


I have Time Warner... how would one check if they are affected by this?

[Lead Head]

Interesting how COX varies by state. Here the "preferred" package is 10/5mbps down and 2 mbps up, but it shows no signs of bandwidth limitations. I have bumped 250 GB in a month before tormenting a bunch of TV shows.

Cox High Speed Internet: Service introduction

[Gig-O-Ram]

Qwest is one of the big providers here in NM. Comcast is another. I wonder how Qwest is going to deal with this?

As far as I know, they don't have any caps on usage, but then even if they did, I don't know that I'd know the difference. I don't download that much stuff, but my wife has downloaded quite a bit of stuff lately, so I don't know.
But even with all that she pulls down, I don't think it's quite 5GB.

[drew and not u]

People have got to fight this kind of thing by switching to alternative services (if available) when companies start pulling this crap. Luckily we I have really good (10M) DSL if Time Warner decides to start pulling this crap in my area. As poor as their service has been even with no cap, we'll cancel our service in a heartbeat.


Edit: Also, just found this article. Good old Google is at it again, developing software tools for users to determine if their ISP's are tampering with their service! 3 Cheers for google!

[One4yu2c]

Originally Posted by drew and not u

As poor as their service has been even with no cap, we'll cancel our service in a heartbeat.

Because the human heart typically beats between 60-90 times per minute (90-140 in infants), I find this notion a bit on the preposterous side.