Data caps by internet providers, how do they work?

[gh4chiefs]

Well I'm hearing unofficially that my ISP, Mediacom, is planning on going to data caps on their internet service. I don't have any details of what the limits would be or anything, and for that matter, it could be BS. But it was a repair tech that told me about it, so I figure there's probably some validity to it.

I know there's probalby no one single answer to this question, as I'm sure different companies do it differently, but I was just wondering for those of you who are already dealing with data caps, how does your ISP implement it? I guess I'm putting the cart before the horse, but I'm kind of trying to get an idea of what I might be facing in the future.

Thanks in advance.

 

[Ha'kiv]

Fucking magnets!

 

[BlobVanDam]

What do you mean how does the ISP implement it? Once I hit my internet cap, my internet speed get capped, but I don't pay extra. With some other ISPs, people just get charged for every Mb/Gb they go over. I prefer to just get capped and not worry about paying.

 

[gh4chiefs]

Well I meant what do they do once you hit the limit. So when you hit the predetermined limit, they just turn your speed way down? Do they turn it down so much that you can't stream video?

And how do they limit you, per day, per month, something else?

 

[BlobVanDam]

Ok, thought so. For me, I get capped until my next billing month, since my cap limit is per month. So if I were to exceed my cap on the first day of my billing month, I'd have to wait a whole month for the cap to be lifted (or I can pay for extra Gb of usage if I want to). The capped speed varies depending on the ISP and what speed your plan is. My internet is slow, so my capped speed is only 64kb/s, so streaming video would be out of the question for me. Actually, that puts just about everything out of the question.
Considering your internet speeds are much faster, you might get capped to a decent enough speed to still watch streaming videos, depending on what it is. No idea.

Keep in mind this is Australia, so it could be entirely different there.

 

[gh4chiefs]

Ok, thanks, I appreciate that. And yeah I know that it will vary from company to company. I'd heard about it for some time now but since it wasn't an issue for me, I never really paid much attention. Now I'm curious about the different ways it might be implemented. Of course for all I know, Mediacom might come up with something totally different from everybody else anyway.

Thanks.

 

[gh4chiefs]

I found this interesting article about caps at http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...ternet-data-caps-fcc-asked-to-investigate.ars . Looks like a slight majority (56%) of Americans now have capped internet access. So it's a trend that seems to be catching on.

Perhaps a side question to my original question is could anyone give me some perspective on just what 250 GB, or in the case of AT&T's DSL caps, 150 GB really represents in terms of watching movies or what not.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

You'll have to pick a specific video service since they all use different bitrates which will consume different amounts of bandwidth. Hulu, Netflix, Youtube, something else?

 

[Jono]

Something not mention that these plans are often "shaped", which means the day is split into "peak" and "off-peak" periods. Your total download allowance would than be split (doesn't have to be an even split) between these two time periods (nor do the time periods have to be even, typically "peak" is longer). So it is important not just to look at how much your total download cap is, but how it is split between these periods and what exactly your ISP considers "peak" and "off-peak".

 

[gh4chiefs]

You'll have to pick a specific video service since they all use different bitrates which will consume different amounts of bandwidth. Hulu, Netflix, Youtube, something else?

Well let's just say Netflix as an example. Who incidentally is now offering their customers the ability to adjust their video quality. This move was supposedly in response to the trend of data caps.

Something not mention that these plans are often "shaped", which means the day is split into "peak" and "off-peak" periods. Your total download allowance would than be split (doesn't have to be an even split) between these two time periods (nor do the time periods have to be even, typically "peak" is longer). So it is important not just to look at how much your total download cap is, but how it is split between these periods and what exactly your ISP considers "peak" and "off-peak".

Wow, sounds like that could get a bit complicated.

 

[BlobVanDam]

Something not mention that these plans are often "shaped", which means the day is split into "peak" and "off-peak" periods. Your total download allowance would than be split (doesn't have to be an even split) between these two time periods (nor do the time periods have to be even, typically "peak" is longer). So it is important not just to look at how much your total download cap is, but how it is split between these periods and what exactly your ISP considers "peak" and "off-peak".

Mine is split into peak and off peak. Luckily my off peak is from midnight until 4pm, which is fairly generous as far as off peak hours go compared to others I know of. If I'm downloading a file, I only do it off peak, because otherwise I go through my peak hour bandwidth too quickly.
It sounds confusing, but as long as you're vaguely aware of it, it's not much of a problem.

 

[Holdfast]

Don't know how it works in the US, but in the UK, the ISP I'm with has a monthly data cap. If you go over it two (or three, can't remember) months in a row, you pay a surcharge based on the amount you've gone over by.

I've only breached the cap once, so never had to pay. Most months, I'm way, way under it, so I've never really bothered to look for alternatives.

 

[gh4chiefs]

That sounds simimilar to what Comcast does, at least as I understand it. Is the 3 times, 3 times any time during your service, or is 3 times a year or something like that?

 

[Robert Maxwell]

That sounds simimilar to what Comcast does, at least as I understand it. Is the 3 times, 3 times any time during your service, or is 3 times a year or something like that?

Sprint does something similar to this with their wireless broadband service. If you go over for 3 consecutive months (I think), they reserve the right to evaluate your usage and possibly terminate your service. Keep in mind you only get 5GB per month to begin with, and then they charge you $50 per gigabyte you use thereafter rather than throttling or shutting off your connection.

And they're the cheaper ones. Verizon charges something like $250 per gigabyte of overage.

 

[Canadave]

My data cap is pretty simple. If I go over, I pay $2\GB for each gig over the cap. It gets hit on occasion, but it's usually not that painful.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

My Verizon DSL service (soon to be FiOS!) has no cap. They just have an omnibus "we can terminate you if you abuse our service" clause.

 

[Holdfast]

That sounds simimilar to what Comcast does, at least as I understand it. Is the 3 times, 3 times any time during your service, or is 3 times a year or something like that?

I think it's 3 (or whatever the number is) times during the life of your contract with them.

But I think my ISP waits for it to happen in consecutive months before they start imposing the charge. They let you off just one random month above the cap occasionally I think. As I say, this is in the UK so may not apply to you, and I haven't looked into it too closely as it hasn't affected me yet, so I don't want to mislead you by accident.

 

[gh4chiefs]

Oh don't worry about misleading me, I totally understand that what your plan has may be nothing like what my company ends up doing. So no problem there, I was just curious in general how different companies implement them.

I appreciate everybody's input. For now, I'm just going to have to be patient to see when and IF they implement the caps. Hopefully if they do, it won't be anything too draconian.

 

[Mr Silver]

Never EVER get mobile broadband! They all have miniscule data allowance caps (around 5Gb's) and theres usually a £15 ($24) charge per additional Gb. I personally use an unlimited allowance service, whilst they'd probably get shitty if I was using like 500Gb's a month through sharing (which i'm not), I don't have to worry about exceeding any limits and I get a good speed, even at peak times.

 

[Holdfast]

Oh don't worry about misleading me, I totally understand that what your plan has may be nothing like what my company ends up doing. So no problem there, I was just curious in general how different companies implement them.

I appreciate everybody's input. For now, I'm just going to have to be patient to see when and IF they implement the caps. Hopefully if they do, it won't be anything too draconian.

To be honest, unless the ISP is really, really stupid it won't feel draconian if you're a normal user.

They're not really trying to piss off average users who email, read and interact on the internet a bit, watch some youtube vids, download a few songs now and then and occasionally watch a longer movie. These people are most of their users, and make them plenty of money as it is. There's no reason to annoy them with a cap low enough to encourage them to switch to another ISP.

They're trying to piss off users who intensively use things like p2p software to move terabytes of data around the place every month and stress their networks too much while doing it. These are the people they want to annoy enough that they use a different ISP.

So unless the ISP's management is really stupid the cap will be placed at a level where only their top 5% (at most) of bandwidth-guzzling users will feel it.

(this is in reference to normal ISPs, not mobile)