Collarspace Discussion Forums


Home  Login  Search 

avoiding high speed internet limits


View related threads: (in this forum | in all forums)

Logged in as: Guest
 
All Forums >> [Casual Banter] >> Off the Grid >> avoiding high speed internet limits Page: [1] 2   next >   >>
Login
Message << Older Topic   Newer Topic >>
avoiding high speed internet limits - 3/25/2013 7:47:27 AM   
defiantbadgirl


Posts: 2988
Joined: 11/14/2005
Status: offline 		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?

_____________________________


Only in the United States is the health of the people secondary to making money. If this is what "capitalism" is about, I'll take socialism any day of the week.


Collared by MartinSpankalot May 13 2008
Profile   Post #: 1
RE: avoiding high speed internet limits - 3/25/2013 3:12:04 PM   
stef


Posts: 10215
Joined: 1/26/2004
Status: offline 		Clearly, not everyone is as savvy as you.

_____________________________

Welcome to PoliticSpace! If you came here expecting meaningful BDSM discussions, boy are you in the wrong place.

"Hypocrisy has consequences"

(in reply to defiantbadgirl)
Profile   Post #: 2
RE: avoiding high speed internet limits - 3/25/2013 6:38:19 PM   
LookieNoNookie


Posts: 12216
Joined: 8/9/2008
Status: offline
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).

(in reply to defiantbadgirl)
Profile   Post #: 3
RE: avoiding high speed internet limits - 3/25/2013 7:29:13 PM   
littlewonder


Posts: 15659
Status: offline
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.


_____________________________

Nothing has changed
Everything has changed

(in reply to defiantbadgirl)
Profile   Post #: 4
RE: avoiding high speed internet limits - 3/25/2013 7:32:54 PM   
FrostedFlake


Posts: 3084
Joined: 3/4/2009
From: Centralia, Washington
Status: offline 		A right to refuse... what?

_____________________________

Frosted Flake
simul justus et peccator
Einen Liebhaber, und halten Sie die Schraube

"... evil (and hilarious) !!" Hlen5

(in reply to LookieNoNookie)
Profile   Post #: 5
RE: avoiding high speed internet limits - 3/25/2013 9:59:17 PM   
descrite


Posts: 459
Joined: 5/14/2012
Status: offline 		...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.

(in reply to FrostedFlake)
Profile   Post #: 6
RE: avoiding high speed internet limits - 3/26/2013 9:02:57 AM   
LafayetteLady


Posts: 7683
Joined: 5/2/2007
From: Northern New Jersey
Status: offline 		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.

(in reply to littlewonder)
Profile   Post #: 7
RE: avoiding high speed internet limits - 3/26/2013 1:36:35 PM   
JstAnotherSub


Posts: 6174
Status: offline
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.

_____________________________

yep

(in reply to defiantbadgirl)
Profile   Post #: 8
RE: avoiding high speed internet limits - 3/26/2013 5:47:20 PM   
theshytype


Posts: 1600
Status: offline 		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.

(in reply to JstAnotherSub)
Profile   Post #: 9
RE: avoiding high speed internet limits - 3/26/2013 5:59:16 PM   
DOM68005


Posts: 6069
Joined: 12/5/2006
From: Nebraska
Status: offline 		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.

(in reply to theshytype)
Profile   Post #: 10
RE: avoiding high speed internet limits - 3/26/2013 6:45:35 PM   
freedomdwarf1


Posts: 6845
Joined: 10/23/2012
Status: offline 		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

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.


(in reply to DOM68005)
Profile   Post #: 11
RE: avoiding high speed internet limits - 3/26/2013 6:49:40 PM   
littlewonder


Posts: 15659
Status: offline 		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.


_____________________________

Nothing has changed
Everything has changed

(in reply to freedomdwarf1)
Profile   Post #: 12
RE: avoiding high speed internet limits - 3/26/2013 6:52:27 PM   
freedomdwarf1


Posts: 6845
Joined: 10/23/2012
Status: offline
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.


< Message edited by freedomdwarf1 -- 3/26/2013 6:53:18 PM >

(in reply to littlewonder)
Profile   Post #: 13
RE: avoiding high speed internet limits - 3/26/2013 7:02:52 PM   
DesFIP


Posts: 25191
Joined: 11/25/2007
From: Apple County NY
Status: offline 		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.

_____________________________

Slave to laundry

Cynical and proud of it!


(in reply to freedomdwarf1)
Profile   Post #: 14
RE: avoiding high speed internet limits - 3/26/2013 7:05:17 PM   
bamabbwsub


Posts: 566
Joined: 5/28/2007
Status: offline 		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.

_____________________________

"Everyone is normal until you get to know them." - Dave Sim

I rescue animals. My pockets and gas tank are always empty. My home is always hairy and my inbox full of sadness, but my heart is full when seeing those that are saved.

(in reply to littlewonder)
Profile   Post #: 15
RE: avoiding high speed internet limits - 3/26/2013 7:11:34 PM   
littlewonder


Posts: 15659
Status: offline 		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.


_____________________________

Nothing has changed
Everything has changed

(in reply to bamabbwsub)
Profile   Post #: 16
RE: avoiding high speed internet limits - 3/26/2013 8:15:45 PM   
LafayetteLady


Posts: 7683
Joined: 5/2/2007
From: Northern New Jersey
Status: offline 		Ok, I don't really know what's what. I'm at 18.07. Is that good?

(in reply to littlewonder)
Profile   Post #: 17
RE: avoiding high speed internet limits - 3/28/2013 12:35:08 AM   
shallowdeep


Posts: 343
Joined: 9/1/2006
From: California
Status: offline
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.

(in reply to defiantbadgirl)
Profile   Post #: 18
RE: avoiding high speed internet limits - 3/28/2013 12:39:31 AM   
shallowdeep


Posts: 343
Joined: 9/1/2006
From: California
Status: offline
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:

(in reply to JstAnotherSub)
Profile   Post #: 19
RE: avoiding high speed internet limits - 3/28/2013 12:42:17 AM   
shallowdeep


Posts: 343
Joined: 9/1/2006
From: California
Status: offline
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.

(in reply to LafayetteLady)
Profile   Post #: 20
Page:   [1] 2   next >   >>
All Forums >> [Casual Banter] >> Off the Grid >> avoiding high speed internet limits Page: [1] 2   next >   >>
Jump to:





New Messages No New Messages
Hot Topic w/ New Messages Hot Topic w/o New Messages
Locked w/ New Messages Locked w/o New Messages
 Post New Thread
 Reply to Message
 Post New Poll
 Submit Vote
 Delete My Own Post
 Delete My Own Thread
 Rate Posts




Collarchat.com © 2025
Terms of Service Privacy Policy Spam Policy

0.094