Data caps by internet providers, how do they work?

[PKTrekGirl]

^ Well, they have annoyed me enough to leave, and I don't move terabytes of data around. I am pissed off because I signed up for, and pay for 'unlimited' service. It's quite expensive in this country too. And when ATT set these 150 GB caps, they did NOT lower our rates. And 150 GB is low enough to where you have to pay attention. And I don't LIKE having to pay attention. It's a hassle I don't need.

But for me, it's not really the terabytes. It's the principle.

Highway robbery. And we are letting these corporations do it to us, because we are a bunch of sheep who no longer care about principle unless it it is costing us something to not care.

Sorry to vent, but I am really furious about what ATT has done. Their service is WAY too expensive to cut it back, especially in this economy. I'm leaving ATT as soon as I can - and not just my internet service, either! Have already moved my cell service, and am working on internet. Then I'll disconnect my home phone and tell them to fuck off.

 

[donners22]

It's the standard for plans in Australia. The shaping does get quite confusing, and can be quite sneaky when you find half your data limit is 1-7am, for instance.

Many plans here have unmetered access to certain sites - particularly valuable when it happens to be something like Steam which could consume a lot of a data limit.

If you are likely to get close to the cap, try to get one which slows the speed rather than charging for use beyond that cap.

 

[LitmusDragon]

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?

Actually when Comcast first unrolled this limitation I did a bit of research and their official explanation (at the time) was that if you went over you would get a phone call warning you that you had went over and discussing what you can do to not go over in the future. Any future violations could be grounds for termination of your account.

I went over one month but I never even got the phone call. I wasn't charged a surcharge either.

 

[gh4chiefs]

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

Well this is Mediacom we're talking about.

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.

As with anything in life, it's the uncertainity that is sometimes worse than the actual event itself. For all I know, the tech may have been talking out of his ass, but based on the utilization issues they're having, it doesn't seem to be too far fetched.

The other part of the uncertainity is not having any idea of how much data I actually use, or how I stack up against the "average" Mediacom customer. I know I stream Netflix quite a bit, but I have no clue in total how many GB's of data I use in average month. Unfortunately Mediacom doesn't currently provide any usage summary (at least not that I can find.)

This kind of reminds of the old day of dial-up with a service like AOL or a local company, and you always had to be aware of your minutes. Seems like stuff always comes full circle.

 

[BlobVanDam]

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

Well this is Mediacom we're talking about.

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.

As with anything in life, it's the uncertainity that is sometimes worse than the actual event itself. For all I know, the tech may have been talking out of his ass, but based on the utilization issues they're having, it doesn't seem to be too far fetched.

The other part of the uncertainity is not having any idea of how much data I actually use, or how I stack up against the "average" Mediacom customer. I know I stream Netflix quite a bit, but I have no clue in total how many GB's of data I use in average month. Unfortunately Mediacom doesn't currently provide any usage summary (at least not that I can find.)

This kind of reminds of the old day of dial-up with a service like AOL or a local company, and you always had to be aware of your minutes. Seems like stuff always comes full circle.

WTF? I hadn't considered that they wouldn't give you a way to, you know... actually check how much you're using. That's like driving a car with no speedo and being expected to keep the speed limit.
With my internet, I sign in to my ISP account and check my usage, broken down by day, and into off peak, and on peak, and upload vs downloads, and updated every 10 minutes or so.

Sure, there are programs that can keep track of uploads/downloads on your computer, but that's only for that one computer, and they're not always free programs, and it shouldn't be your job to keep track of the usage anyway. If you have a cap, you have the right to see how much you're using.

 

[gh4chiefs]

Oh I'm sure they will when the time comes. I'm talking about currently. For now anyway, there is no cap.

EDIT TO ADD: I went online and double checked my bill thinking maybe they post a summary somewhere, but no luck.

 

[Candlelight]

In New Zealand there are no uncapped plans. Everything was capped since broadband was introduced.

I'm just on a 10GB/month plan. Once I hit that I go back to dial up speeds.

I hardly get near my cap though. Usually within a Gig to spare.

 

[NCC1701]

^ Yep, same here. We're on a 20Gb limit, which we usually hit about 3 weeks into the month - there are five of us at home and we don't download a lot of music, tv shows or movies, youtube is a killer though! - so being stuck to browsing the net at 5kb/s is a pretty regular occurance for me.

 

[Scout101]

They basically get away with this by telling you that it won't affect YOU, it's just for the 'bad guys' that use more than you do. Then they reduce it some more, and suddenly you're the guy they're after...

Kinda like raising taxes. Everyone can kinda get behind it when they wanna tax the top 5% a little more (or something like that). I mean, they can afford it, right? Then you realize that you're not just getting the people with private jets, you've started to get regular people too. And down we go.

They keep cutting back services and raising prices, and since not enough people ever quit, they keep getting away with it. Why are voice minutes still expensive, and why do you have to sign up for 5000 minutes, when most people barely use a fraction of that? You pay big bucks for unlimited data, and then pay another $20 for text messaging, which is just tiny bundles of data, transmitted the same way over the same network.