avoiding high speed internet limits (Full Version)

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defiantbadgirl -> avoiding high speed internet limits (3/25/2013 7:47:27 AM)

Some time ago, internet service providers in the United States decided to put limits on home internet service. Customers were outraged and many still complain. Since this was widely publicized beforehand, I knew what to do when my ISP called trying to entice me with a higher speed with limits for a lower price for a few months. I simply told them I wasn't interested and preferred to keep my slightly slower unlimited high speed internet and that was the end of it. I don't understand why more people haven't done the same. Do people not realize they have a right to refuse?



stef -> RE: avoiding high speed internet limits (3/25/2013 3:12:04 PM)

Clearly, not everyone is as savvy as you.



LookieNoNookie -> RE: avoiding high speed internet limits (3/25/2013 6:38:19 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: defiantbadgirl

Some time ago, internet service providers in the United States decided to put limits on home internet service. Customers were outraged and many still complain. Since this was widely publicized beforehand, I knew what to do when my ISP called trying to entice me with a higher speed with limits for a lower price for a few months. I simply told them I wasn't interested and preferred to keep my slightly slower unlimited high speed internet and that was the end of it. I don't understand why more people haven't done the same. Do people not realize they have a right to refuse?


I suspect anyone with a credit card, 12 bucks in their pocket or....anyone that watches the news, realizes they have choices.

(Some simply opt out).

(Of life's decisions).



littlewonder -> RE: avoiding high speed internet limits (3/25/2013 7:29:13 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: defiantbadgirl

Some time ago, internet service providers in the United States decided to put limits on home internet service. Customers were outraged and many still complain. Since this was widely publicized beforehand, I knew what to do when my ISP called trying to entice me with a higher speed with limits for a lower price for a few months. I simply told them I wasn't interested and preferred to keep my slightly slower unlimited high speed internet and that was the end of it. I don't understand why more people haven't done the same. Do people not realize they have a right to refuse?


Yup but I love my high speed and wish I had Fios but we don't have it available to us here. As for the limits, I don't spend so much time online that I have ever even come anywhere even close to the limits. If you are meeting those kinds of limits, you may wanna think about taking a walk outside for awhile.



FrostedFlake -> RE: avoiding high speed internet limits (3/25/2013 7:32:54 PM)

A right to refuse... what?



descrite -> RE: avoiding high speed internet limits (3/25/2013 9:59:17 PM)

...increased speed, for lower price?


Yeah. Sounds like a ripoff to me, too.

Also, that thing at the restaurants where I get more food for less money...that pisses me off, also.

For some reason.

That'll show 'em.



LafayetteLady -> RE: avoiding high speed internet limits (3/26/2013 9:02:57 AM)

If my high speed internet had limits, I was never aware of them, and I spend a lot of time online. I also have been known to leave a page open while I went out, which would certainly add to reaching those limits.

As usual the OP is crying foul where none exists. If someone is trying to "entice" another, there is obviously a choice, and unless one has an IQ of about 80, they could figure that out. It seems the idea that many of us simply WANT our high speed internet is a foreign concept.



JstAnotherSub -> RE: avoiding high speed internet limits (3/26/2013 1:36:35 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: defiantbadgirl

Some time ago, internet service providers in the United States decided to put limits on home internet service. Customers were outraged and many still complain. Since this was widely publicized beforehand, I knew what to do when my ISP called trying to entice me with a higher speed with limits for a lower price for a few months. I simply told them I wasn't interested and preferred to keep my slightly slower unlimited high speed internet and that was the end of it. I don't understand why more people haven't done the same. Do people not realize they have a right to refuse?

The stuff that I have colored are things I have never heard of. Would you be so kind as to post a news article or something about these things so that I can understand your point better?

Thanks.



theshytype -> RE: avoiding high speed internet limits (3/26/2013 5:47:20 PM)

I've never heard of this, either. I have heard of limits on data usage for cell phones but that's something different.
I would have a problem being limited to how much Internet I use at home - I need it for work.



DOM68005 -> RE: avoiding high speed internet limits (3/26/2013 5:59:16 PM)

The OP is correct, but it has been a few years in my area. Cox capped internet speed in part due to abuses by some who were running servers out of their homes. Somebody in my area was doing so and consumming the majority of the server capacity of the server for my area. IMO, their solution was worse than the problem. They capped speeds down to a level that made DSL attractive. I switched. DSL claimed to provide individual servers in the telephone switch center. I believed them. Service was capped at five mps. That was still better than the reduction cap Cox did. Over time, we have upgraded to 7, 12 and most recently 20 MPS on what is now known as Centurylink.



freedomdwarf1 -> RE: avoiding high speed internet limits (3/26/2013 6:45:35 PM)

That sort of practice is quite common in the UK too.

We had an 8Mb unlimited service with Orange and we were paying £20 a month. Many others were £15/month or less.
But that also included a free 2nd phone line (via VOIP) that offered free daytime calls 24/7 and free calls to Orange cell phones.
Considering the kids were on Orange for their cell phones and the freebie 24/7 landline calls saved us around £100+ per month - it was worth paying £20/month for that rather than other cheaper services from other ISP's.
Every few months we would get calls from Orange asking us to change our package to a cheaper £12/month one but it didn't have the free 2nd phone line which was worth a lot more to us.

Eventually, they changed their name to Everything Everywhere (EE) and tried to tempt us with other services as our package was no longer available to new subscribers and had been taken off several years ago.
BT pulled the plug on their VOIP service that many ISP's were using (including EE) so we had no choice! [:(]
What we were offered was for them to take over the BT landline (which we had deliberately kept separate) and they offered all the nice things we had with our 2nd line as an all-in-one at the same price and we no longer had to pay BT for the line rental [8D]

With the new modem they sent us, we are now getting speeds of over 10Mb and a rock-solid connection for no extra costs.

We had asked several other ISP's about so-called 'unlimited' internet only to discover that pretty much most of them used something called 'Data Profiling'.
This is something very common (and not just the UK) that many people have no idea about or even if their ISP is using it.
If you have 'unlimited' internet and frequently use it heavilly, the Data Profiling software they use will start cutting your max speed down so as not to affect other users of their network and potentially slow them down.
This is more noticable during peak times when there are often more people using the internet than at other times.
You might think your internet is 'just a bit slow today' when in fact you've been 'profiled' and your ISP has capped your speed, albeit temporarilly.

Then there are others that advertise their service as 'unlimited' when in fact it does have a limit - usually 100GB or less per month (but they don't tell you that!).
Most people, unless they are really heavy internet users, wouldn't hit the cap or the usage limit so they are oblivious to it.

We are extremely heavy users of the internet and we would hit a speed cap or a 100GB usage limit within a matter of days.
We have 9 PC's here that are online 24/7 and usually doing something online too.
The kids are constantly chatting with their friends on some IM and reading online stories.
We are also chatting and also constantly downloading stuff by the bucket-load 24/7 - usually movies or music or older TV series we like.
As an example, this one PC alone has downloaded about 32GB of stuff since late Sunday morning (about 60 hours so far) and quite often there are several PC's downloading different things simultaneously for days and even weeks at a time.
That's why we needed a truly unlimited and unmonitored service - which is quite rare over here.
If it costs us a few extra £'s to have that - it's worth it for us.




littlewonder -> RE: avoiding high speed internet limits (3/26/2013 6:49:40 PM)

Yes this thing used to be true with the internet over 10 years ago but since the advent of wireless and fios, that is no longer true. The ex Dom once had his internet connection shut off because he went over the limit but that was when we still had to connect through our modems.

So unless the op is still connecting that way, I think she's not really getting the whole story correct as usual or she lives in bump fucked Egypt where the closest to fun is sitting on your porch with your basset hound.



freedomdwarf1 -> RE: avoiding high speed internet limits (3/26/2013 6:52:27 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: littlewonder
Yes this thing used to be true with the internet over 10 years ago but since the advent of wireless and fios, that is no longer true....


Unfortunately LW, it's still very true for an awful lot of internet users - even these days!

And I'm not talking about dial-up either.



DesFIP -> RE: avoiding high speed internet limits (3/26/2013 7:02:52 PM)

I would cheerfully kill for FIOS. DSL sucks.

But any household containing teenagers or early 20s can use more bandwidth than a small city, ime.

There are times there are 6 of them here and it's painful trying to get online.



bamabbwsub -> RE: avoiding high speed internet limits (3/26/2013 7:05:17 PM)

I've never heard of limiting usage for Internet service, but many ISPs do put a limit on speeds when your usage is high. It's called "throttling."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bandwidth_throttling

So the more you use, the slower your Internet connection.

I've also heard that the speeds that some ISPs advertise are false. You can check your connection speed at speedtest.net.



littlewonder -> RE: avoiding high speed internet limits (3/26/2013 7:11:34 PM)

My daughter got FIOS a couple of months ago. I'm sooooo jealous of her! I wish we could get it here in Baltimore but they refuse to install it here. Comcast has a monopoly here.



LafayetteLady -> RE: avoiding high speed internet limits (3/26/2013 8:15:45 PM)

Ok, I don't really know what's what. I'm at 18.07. Is that good?



shallowdeep -> RE: avoiding high speed internet limits (3/28/2013 12:35:08 AM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: defiantbadgirl
I don't understand why more people haven't done the same. Do people not realize they have a right to refuse?

In many cases, they don't; terms of service are frequently updated to apply to existing subscribers. In fact, I suspect there is a good chance you are giving yourself a false sense of freedom from the data limits by declining the faster service. If your ISP is one that imposes data caps, it is likely that your current plan is already capped, whether you realize it or not. For example, with AT&T, the switch from standard DSL, once marketed as "unlimited," to U-Verse would actually raise your data limits from 150 GB/mo to 250 GB/mo.



shallowdeep -> RE: avoiding high speed internet limits (3/28/2013 12:39:31 AM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: JstAnotherSub
The stuff that I have colored are things I have never heard of. Would you be so kind as to post a news article or something about these things so that I can understand your point better?

Monthly data limitations have become fairly common in the US. These limits are generally relatively high (typically >100 GB/mo) and are not currently encountered by the majority of subscribers, but with the increase in data-intensive services the likelihood of running into limits may increase. More than 64% of US broadband connections are now subject to limits, according to this article, which presents a table summarizing the existing limits for major ISPs as of last October. Comcast's policy is currently undergoing some changes and their data caps have been temporarily suspended except in test markets, but the stated plan is to reinstate them. This article puts US ISPs' policies in a more global perspective.

The ostensible rationales presented by ISPs for the limits on data focus on preventing network congestion; however, from a technical standpoint, simple data limits are not particularly effective at doing so and many consumer advocates and industry observers see the caps largely as a way to create or protect revenue rather than to solve a problem with capacity. Some companies, like AT&T, already charge subscribers for overages, and Comcast has begun to test similar policies. Since the actual marginal cost to an ISP of providing additional data is often essentially nothing, the policy has been criticized by some as creating an artificial scarcity purely to boost profits.

Another criticism centers around a conflict of interest – major ISPs are now often also providers of data-heavy video and telephony services, services which may compete with similar ones offered by third parties, like Netflix. ISPs usually don't count their own services' data usage against the data limits they impose on subscribers, but they do count competitors' data against the limits. With Netflix's new 1080p video streams, for instance, a user could exceed a 300 GB monthly data limit while watching around 80 hours of programming a month, potentially incurring charges or having their connection shut off. Given average US video consumption rates (around 5 hours per day, according to Nielsen), that may not be a particularly difficult figure to hit, especially for a family. With the near-monopoly status that many ISPs have, the caps have been criticized as anti-competitive barriers that unfairly protect an ISP's own bundled video and telephone services.

Some white papers if you are curious:



shallowdeep -> RE: avoiding high speed internet limits (3/28/2013 12:42:17 AM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: LafayetteLady
I also have been known to leave a page open while I went out, which would certainly add to reaching those limits.

I'm afraid all that shows with certainty is some confusion about what creates network traffic. Simply leaving a page open will generally generate no traffic - your browser has already requested and received all the data it needs; merely displaying that data, regardless of the duration of the display, requires no additional network activity. In any event, web browsing is not a data-intensive activity. You could easily browse 24/7 and not hit data limits. The limits become a concern for more demanding applications, especially video.

quote:

ORIGINAL: LafayetteLady
Ok, I don't really know what's what. I'm at 18.07. Is that good?

That would depend on what service you are paying for. But, assuming that figure is for download speed and the units are Mbps, you are above the national average for US broadband connections, which stood at 6.6 Mbps last year.



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