Brian Kidd
Senior HTF Member
- Joined
- Nov 14, 2000
- Messages
- 2,555
I'm one of the "lucky" folks whose ISP, Suddenlink, has decided to instate data caps. You know, to "protect the quality of service for the entire network."
Persianimmortal said:Data caps are a practical necessity, as nothing is truly unlimited, and there are a huge number of people ready to abuse services beyond sensible limits.
In a study of South Korea's Internet infrastructure, the International Telecommunications Union cited "unique housing patterns and high population density" as key factors behind its world-class broadband speeds. More than 60% of the population lives in apartments, and most people live within four kilometers of the local telephone office.
It's no surprise that many of the other countries and territories that have significantly faster average connection speeds than the U.S. have a much higher population density. Examples include Japan, Hong Kong, the Netherlands, and Switzerland. Other sparsely populated countries like Canada and Australia have slower average broadband speeds than the U.S.
In Canada, things seem to be moving in the opposite direction. All of the major providers used to have hard data caps, but have recently begun offering unlimited options for an extra $10 or so per month.
I wish that was the case in the U.S. While, in my case, the data cap increased by subscribing to a more-expensive package, we ended up paying an extra $30 a month for their 550 Gb cap and still had to tell the kids today that we won't be able to use any streaming media for the next three days until our cap rolls over. Grumpy teenagers are not fun housemates. One of them asked what they were supposed to do. The look on his face when I said, "I don't know; read a book? Watch a Blu-ray or DVD? Play a video game that doesn't use online multiplayer?" suggested that I was speaking a form of Martian.
Pray they don't murder me in my sleep during the next few days.
How much is he chipping in for the Internet bill? I remember having to put a dime or a quarter in the plate next to the phone to make a personal call to cover the Per call/per minute fees, anything over 5 minutes cost more.
550GB per month and they're blowing the top -- I think that's half of my personal 2014 and 2015 usage combined though when my kids were home for the holidays it was scary to see my usage stats.
550GB sounds like a lot, but you'd be surprised at how fast you can reach that number. I read a lot of news articles online from MSN, Seattle Times, my local paper, etc. No streaming, no downloading movies or TV shows, but behind the scenes, all kinds of little videos, ads and other links are loading. No way to block them that I've discovered, but wow, they'll bump up your data usage far more than you'd expect.
Some sites are pretty decent. HTF, Facebook and some others, but be careful, you could be downloading tons of crap, never even knowing it.
You make some valid points.
I find it interesting, however, that the ISPs intentionally promote higher speeds expressly for the purpose of streaming high-quality video, while severely limiting the amount of data that can be downloaded. I could almost accept enforcing caps during peak times while allowing unlimited usage during off-peak hours. It still seems ridiculous to me.
I realize that streaming high quality video and downloading large files (which, with modern video game consoles is a necessity) uses a lot of bandwidth, but that just tells me that the cable companies need to invest in upgrading their infrastructure to meet demands. In the U.S., at least, the average Internet speeds are far below many other countries, yet we pay through the nose for it. Why? Cable companies have a monopoly in most areas. There is no incentive to improve because they can charge what they like and enforce any arbitrary fees they like without regard to quality of service or the needs of the customer. With land-line Internet connections, the technology is advanced enough that bandwidth in most places is a non-issue.
I suppose it will eventually come to a head whereby consumers complain enough to the government to force them to begin to regulate ISPs in order to open up their territories to competition. It's the only way that Internet prices and quality of service will improve in the U.S.