said by jfmezei :

And in the end, when you look at very big content like HD movies or even HD television "live" (streamed), the only way it will work is if each ISP as its own server to stream it to its own customers, or use peering with folks like google or akamai to do it "locally".

said by Guspaz :

"IPv6 and IPv4 on the same connection - included at no extra charge."

So you don't have to move entirely to IPv6, just support it.

TekSavvy is already a multi-gigabit ISP, so it's not like it's a huge insanely big commit for them...

Here's the important part, though:

"Hurricane Electric IP Transit service is available in colocation facilities such as Equinix, Switch and Data, Telehouse, Interxion, etc. and cities such as New York, Los Angeles, Fremont, Palo Alto, San Jose, Dallas, Chicago, Ashburn, London, Amsterdam, Paris, and Frankfurt."

The closest is Chicago, IIRC, as that's where most traffic enters the US. So TekSavvy would have to pay for a point-to-point line to Chicago on top of everything else. If we can use Bell's non-transit GigE pricing for wholesalers as a rough estimate (I can't recall, it was either $1300 or $1800, and I have no better frame of reference), then the total cost would still be lower than cogent, but no longer dramatically so.

said by NBomb :

I believe I tend to average 60~GB a month on my premium account (according to the stats tool, I went over my limit last month, probably thanks to a torrent... damn those!), and honestly I don't feel cramped for cap space. Even on an unlimited account, I doubt I'd top 150 or even 120 GB a month, I do everything I want right now and don't really reach my limit.

My point is, I don't mind caps, as long as they're somewhat in line with the speed that's being offered.

said by id24601 :

I would stick with my good old Unlimited 3000/800.

said by Guspaz :

The problem is that connection speeds are driven by competition irrespective of transit costs.

said by Guspaz :

Again, if that's your concern, then don't screw over the rest of us; take your 5mbit connection with 300GB cap and limit it to 1mbit at your router. There, you don't have to worry any more, and the rest of us can enjoy non-crippled speeds.

said by Black Moon :

The former, because I CANNOT go over the cap (assuming it's around 300) and needn't worry about having to pay more if I do.

You all might favour insane speeds with low to medium caps. I do not. Different strokes.

said by Moonlight_x :

BTW, unlimited 1Mbps = 270GB/month... that in itself is a sort of cap. Would you prefer to have 1Mbps unlimited or 10Mbps with a 250GB cap? I would prefer 10Mbps capped.

said by Guspaz :

No offense, but your laziness would undo a decade of progress in internet connection speeds. If you're that desperate to get a slower connection, it's trivial to limit your connection to 1mbit on your router (if it's something like a WRT54G) or in Windows/Linux.

said by Guspaz :

download Alien and Aliens in high def

said by Black Moon :

And seriously, when can you ever pull 500K/sec? Almost never. So once you get to about 16Mbps, you expect to download at 1.5Mbyte/sec? Forget it. It's not gonna happen.

said by Black Moon :

And seriously, when can you ever pull 500K/sec? Almost never. So once you get to about 16Mbps, you expect to download at 1.5Mbyte/sec? Forget it. It's not gonna happen.

said by Guspaz :

As for lowering profiles, are you kidding me? I'd rather have a cap (and DO have a cap) than be limited in my transfer speeds. I want to be able to download fast when I need to download, not be limited to some slow speed to prevent higher usage. Your proposal doesn't make sense; it solves the same problem as caps by taking away the choice that caps give; WHEN to use your bandwidth.

said by espaeth :

The $5/Mbps special they are running is $5000 for a full GigE, and you have to be transiting IPv6. For IPv4 only it's $7000 for a GigE for new customers. Standard rates apply after the initial circuit.

-Eric

said by Omr :

About the IP Transit going at $10/Mbps I saw one months ago on an Linux Journal Magazine going at $5/Mbps

said by jfmezei :

Could you guys use QoS features to give premium users better access to bandwidth and the unlimited guys lower priority ?

Say you have a 100mbs link with Cogent, could you limit to say 70mbps the amount used at any point in time by the unlimited users ?

said by Black Moon :

So then what is the solution? Either lower people's profiles so that they CANNOT go nuts or implement a cap. I'd rather it was the former.

said by Guspaz :

Black Moon: TekSavvy doesn't have control over the DSL lines. They can't do things like offer 1mbit service for $20.

said by Guspaz :

My understanding was that the $30 cap only applied to the 7mbit service, and not the 16mbit service.

said by TOPDAWG :

Not really cause bell is also booting people off for braking some soft cap on unlimited too.

said by TOPDAWG :

Not really cause bell is also booting people off for braking some soft cap on unlimited too.

said by Tack :

If the unlimited accounts are an increasing threat to profitability (or worse, sustaining your own business), then I think everyone will understand if you make some changes to this plan. As you say, TSI is not a charity.

I do like the idea of the tiered plans TSI currently offers. For the unlimited plan (which would ideally be renamed if it's no longer actually unlimited), some fairly high cap with reasonable overage charges seems fair to me. (Perhaps my voice doesn't count as much since I'm on premium.)

said by ROCKY :

We want to recognise the hardcore's who brought us more business as a result of the "if you're a heavy user, the come over, just don't forget to bring your non-heavy user friends" statement!

said by R0CKY :

Action Now: We're not looking to do anything at a rapid pace for the simple reason that we first need to find a way to measure if we can salvage options to keep the unlimited around.

We want to recognise the hardcore's who brought us more business as a result of the "if you're a heavy user, the come over, just don't forget to bring your non-heavy user friends" statement!

No matter the outcome over the next few months, we'll be sharing stats as we move along so that if the ratios get worse we can all share in the solution!

Rocky

said by jfmezei :

>We'll be watching things very closely on this level over the >next year no doubt.... If we have to adjust, don't you >worry, we will! ;)

Mr Rocky,

Just for the sake of discussion, what would happen if you were to announce tomorrow that a 300gig limit will be applied to any new customer signing up on the cogent option, with 100gigs for the peer1 option ? (but grandfather existing unlimited customers) ?

Personally, I tend to agree with moonlight, I would rather see you take proactive measures to prevent the problem from getting out of hand (at which point, fixing it might be more painful).

Does Teksavvy really want to attract bandwidth hogs ?

To me, as long as the bandwidth limits increase with time to match "normal" usage, then I am ok with the limits. (eg: when downloading HD movies becomes common, I expect that 100gig Peer1 limit to be boosted.)

I would rather see the limits increased for everyone at regular intervals instead of seeing a 4% of customers essentially stealing our bandwidth and preventing you (Telksavvy) from boosting our limits.

But it is your business, and I realise you know your customers better than me.

said by Chucky7 :

Hi Rocky,

I'm one of your clients that got the 10$ login account (prime bandwidth - 100GB) Even though you have stopped offering that option, does this means that you will eventually cancel the 10$ login to those who already have it ? (Such as me)

Chuck

Does Teksavvy really want to attract bandwidth hogs ?

said by GUTB :

Making maximum use of the bandwidth available is not abuse, it is recieving the service they are owed by the service provider via contract obligation. Likewise, if the service provider is able to alter the level of service via contract agreement, then capping and throttling cannot be considered a breach of contract.

The infrastructure is not being developed in line with the demand. This is essentially due to Canada's declining wealth, which hss a number of root causes ranging from global ecenomic downturns to mass immigration. The end result is that the major network providers are going to either limit access or price them accordingly high. There will be no relief for the mainstream market, as any competative alternative to network access will end up running into the same infrastructure limitations. This is not a problem anyone is going to solve until a lot more capital gets invested into upgrading our national networks.

said by TOPDAWG :

Looks to me like the unlimited logins are just a bad idea.

said by TOPDAWG :

Does it not also drive up your cost? You still have to pay for the bandwidth they use right? Looks like a lose lose to tek you ask me.

said by daboom :

It is a paid Login for teksavvy for in your case since your on Bell sympatico, you could buy this login from Teksavvy and use that instead of the bell user id for your internet. Thus allowing you to use teksavvy's services and bandwith used will not count on ur BS account. :D

said by R0CKY :

We'll be watching things very closely on this level over the next year no doubt.... If we have to adjust, don't you worry, we will! ;)

said by neko :

It doesn't sound as if there is going to be any immediate changes by Tek, but I am certain when a solution is found it will be agreeable for the majority of users, though perhaps not to the mega hogs - If they need 800Gb a month, they should pay extra for it; I think that's only fair that regular users are not subsidising anyone.

said by Moonlight_x :

With unchanged $30/100GB/month Premium, new $30/200GB/month Bulk and re-priced $40/month Unlimited, there would be a plan for everybody to remain happy with for the time being: moderate users (50-200GB/month) would still only pay $30/month while any reasonable moderately-heavy/heavy user would not mind paying $10/month extra to remain on Unlimited.

said by Moonlight_x :

What I fear is that TSI could get trampled by abusers for being too generous, good and honest... so I'd prefer that TSI became a little less generous with heavy users sooner rather than sacrifice the good and honest parts later.

said by R0CKY :

Hi Moonlight_x,

So long as we can keep the overall costs of delivering the unlimited products down.... there may be a few out of the box strategies that we will investigate in order to keep good'ol "Unlimited" around.... We're working hard at finding an alternate way of dealing with this challenge! We'll find something, don't you worry! ;)

said by edugas :

That's the Pareto principle basically..

»en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle

said by qweloo :

How many bandwidth hogs compared to those who leave videotron/bell/rogers because they use 120 gb per month while the cap are at 60gb per month or even 100gb per month (are they bandwidth hogs too?), they are tired of being lied to or jerked around, they want to make a statement and support TS so that a real alternative and competition exists.

said by qweloo :

Have we become so intolerant as a society ? As far as I know we live in a country where the charter of rights exists and that is one of the great icon that distinguish this country amongst others.

said by qweloo :

Like I said, I believe that teksavvy is not a company where profits comes before everything unlike bell/rogers/videotron who have to make sure that they squeeze every penny out of their customers. I dont think that TS has to make money on every unlimited customers but they do have to make money on the whole.

said by qweloo :

I also dont believe that more than 5% of unlimited customers do more than 200-300gb per month.

said by andyb :

I understand that but the people causing the problem with unlimited go to cogecent or something then off to some other people but not torix I don't think

said by jfmezei :

Au contraire. The big ISPwant to lose those bandwidth hogs.

said by andyb :

From what I know its peak hours.A few years back it was from like 8 in the morning to 6 at night(Business hours) were the busy hours.Now with half the country on high speed its those peoples hour's.When they get off work(5-6ish) till they go to bed(11-1:00ish)

said by andyb :

From what I know its peak hours.A few years back it was from like 8 in the morning to 6 at night(Business hours) were the busy hours.Now with half the country on high speed its those peoples hour's.When they get off work(5-6ish) till they go to bed(11-1:00ish)

said by bananer :

A WHOLE banana? seems kinda much... :p

said by TSI Steve :

We decided to pay Rick this week ...

Happy Halloween,
Steve

said by TSI Scott :

And Rick well...he tries. Donations can be sent directly to him by PM...he accepts all major credit cards.

said by Guspaz :

The fact remains that lighting up more dark strands provides ample expansion room (I'd imagine they'd stick quite a few strands when laying the cable seeing as how it costs almost nothing next to the cost of laying it) until such time as they need to start swapping out for some higher capacity equipment.

said by Guspaz :

Anyhow, my point was, you lay the fibre now, and it'll scale for decades to come. Although I'm not sure what the operational lifetime of a fibre run is...

said by Guspaz :

Yes, maybe they can't make back their money within 10 years. But since the bandwidth capacity of fibre is virtually infinite as far as we're concerned (I think we're at 14 terabits per strand with current technology), they're set for the long term.

said by Bellunder :

Tell that to the suckers on the Canadian side of Fort Erie and all the border towns. They watch as the Americans download and upload all they want while the Candians get it up the 5 hole and the Canadian dollar is worth more than the US dollar. Another nice slap in the face for Canadians. Maybe in the next mini-budget they'll have rebates for Canadians using cable and dsl internet.

said by Bellunder :

Tell that to the suckers on the Canadian side of Fort Erie and all the border towns. They watch as the Americans download and upload all they want while the Candians get it up the 5 hole and the Canadian dollar is worth more than the US dollar. Another nice slap in the face for Canadians. Maybe in the next mini-budget they'll have rebates for Canadians using cable and dsl internet.

said by Bellunder :

Tell that to the suckers on the Canadian side of Fort Erie and all the border towns. They watch as the Americans download and upload all they want while the Candians get it up the 5 hole and the Canadian dollar is worth more than the US dollar. Another nice slap in the face for Canadians. Maybe in the next mini-budget they'll have rebates for Canadians using cable and dsl internet.

said by Gruesome :

Yes but that was for casted spending to 2010 and I believe they already have over 1 million subscribers
Gruesome

said by habskilla :

Deadpool,

You work or Bell as a billing manager (yes?), which I'm thankful you don't work in product development because we need people with vision to look beyond today's bottom line and think about tomorrow's. No disrespect meant.

FIOS is not making money now, but with their huge growth numbers they've been posting, it just a matter of time.

Verison is rolling out an infrastructure where literally the sky is the limit with what they can do with it.

said by Deadpool :

How about showing me tangible numbers, such as how much they've spent in R&D and rollout versus how much they charge on a monthly basis for the service?
I looked it up. Verizon has stated publicly when they first started work on FIOS, that they would invest 18 billion dollars. This was back in 2004.

said by Deadpool :

As it's been said in many forums here before: what's being marketed and what's being provided are two different things.

It's not mentioned how many people can actually get the service or how well it even works!

What you see and what you get can be two completely different things.

Look at Verizon in the US with their FTTH rollout. Lots of capital spent, little return thus far. HUGE gamble with no one proving it's worth it yet.

said by Deadpool :

I personally think people should stop comparing apples to oranges (ie: Canada vs the World). It's completely different markets, different demographics, different acquisition costs, etc...

This isn't SimCity folks! :D

said by R0CKY :

Thinking some of you are confusing what I've written at this point.

I'm simply stating that Bell has taken measures to completely block individuals that were deemed abusive on Sympatico, thus not allowing them to come over to any other ISP that goes through the Bell DSLAMs....

said by Angelo_ :

so possibility of free internet for savvy users ;)

said by Black Moon :

Ah, I see. So Bell is indirectly doing you chaps a favour too, huh?

said by Deadpool :

Note to Rocky: You now owe me $30,000 in legal fees. :D ;)

said by Guspaz :

Even if Unlimited isn't going anywhere, I'd appreciate an update from Rocky as to what direction it's going in. I think we still need some sort of idea about what kind of ranges TSI considers acceptable on an Unlimited connection. As in, "If you're in the ballpark range of X to Y GB/mth, you should be unaffected by any eventual changes we make."

That'd make me feel a whole lot better about selling the service.

said by R0CKY :

No, this isn't right... TekSavvy has their own abuse policies and we still have an unlimited product. The situation is entirely related to someone getting banned from Sympatico. If they do, their address & phone number will no longer qualify for service in the database.

said by Guspaz :

Even if Unlimited isn't going anywhere, I'd appreciate an update from Rocky as to what direction it's going in. I think we still need some sort of idea about what kind of ranges TSI considers acceptable on an Unlimited connection. As in, "If you're in the ballpark range of X to Y GB/mth, you should be unaffected by any eventual changes we make."

That'd make me feel a whole lot better about selling the service.

said by Deadpool :

Incorrect. Bell is only cutting off their own customers.

said by Black Moon :

Let me see if I get this right: Bell is cutting off abusive users even if those use a different login than Sympatico and use a 3rd-party ISP, right? If that is the case, doesn't that imply we have to abide by Sympatico's Acceptable User Policy, even if, when we sign up with Tek, there is no mention of anything related to Bell in their TOS?

said by Black Moon :

Let me see if I get this right: Bell is cutting off abusive users even if those use a different login than Sympatico and use a 3rd-party ISP, right? If that is the case, doesn't that imply we have to abide by Sympatico's Acceptable User Policy, even if, when we sign up with Tek, there is no mention of anything related to Bell in their TOS?

said by R0CKY :

As I've mentioned... We're currently not planning to remove the unlimited. We're simply dealing with trying to make the relationship with Bell work and working with them to deal with their download Abuse policies. The intent of a login service was initially to be used as an alternative for either testing/back-up/redundancy.... As with various different products, it opens the door for abusive behaviour...

said by karljohnson :

While I would not mind a price increase on unlimited dsl to cover costs, I am very much opposed to eliminating unlimited and going with a capped service with overage charges. I probably stay under 300gigs a month usually, but that doesn't mean I want a service with a cap of 500gigs. I don't want to have to watch my downloads and second guess everything I do online. I am willing to pay a little bit more to cover the usage of 1TB a month users just so we can all have an unlimited internet service.

I will try to keep my downloads off peak hours, and I have already been trying to get some friends who are light users to switch to teksavvy so they can offset the cost of my relatively heavy usage.

said by ancodia :

correct me if I'm wrong, but isnt it Bell who is complaining about the amount of data being transferred on their network? So ultimately wouldnt it be Bell who puts a cap on how much a dsl user can transfer per month, regardless of who the reseller is? In other words, Bell may cap how much data gets transferred from you to Teksavvy.

said by Bellunder :

Rocky ventured out west and found that Albertans are serious downloaders. Now that fault lies with Telus because they capped all the users so now finally they can download 100 gigs a month. Remember i said it first it's all Telus' fault. When it rains it pours first all the big time downloaders from Ontario are making themselves known and yes those Albertans won't change their habits.

said by jfmezei :

Question to Mr Rocky:

Is it correct to state that the real issue here is that the GAS pricing is fixed no matter how much bandwidth a particular user uses and Bell doesn't like having to carry gagillions of packets from a user in St-Profond-des-Creux Québec all the way to Toronto for essentially free ?

Is the real issue here a threath by Bell to start charging for bandwidth between customers and ISPs ?

said by JayMan :

Of course. Bit you might get sprayed by coffee when you cut into them.

said by joshb :

Is Rocky or Marc up for offering as well?? :p

said by qweloo :

I guess the easy answer is nothing is changed now except for unlimited dsl login for 10$ which no longer exist.

But I guess TS wants to get some user feedback on how to keep unlimited alive and keep the extreme abuses from occuring too often since too much abuses put them in a difficult position.

The good point I see is that at least they are trying to get some feedback, not lie to you on the phone and deny that they lied about it like bell/rogers.

I guess to help TS:
1) download more on off peak hours. maybe self-limit your speed in your torrent software on peak hours. I think thats still better than bell/rogers who throttle you without asking.

2) bring your family and friends with lower bandwidth requirement to teksavvy instead of leaving them at bell/rogers. In the end you are doing your friends a service as the support is way better at TS anyway.

said by ancodia :

Tek might have little say in what that cap might be.

said by neko :

I may be wrong, but didn't rocky say by Christmas there would be caps by all ISP's - Tek will have to do it too. I hope the Tek cap will be something reasonable.

said by Guspaz :

That's not a very good fit for msot people, though. What if you're on bulk and you need a total of about 250GB/mth? You're paying for 450GB when you only need 250GB.

said by Guspaz :

I don't much care if peak bandwidth is a concern or not. The day TekSavvy takes us a decade into the past with anything relating to bandwidth usage based on the time of day is the day that I and many other users switch away. I don't think they'd ever do something that stupid. Besides, it's probably too technically involved to manage something like that anyhow. They already can't effectively track bandwidth unless the user disconnects. iStop's solution to that problem was that getting into the off-peak bandwidth times (where it didn't count toward your cap) was to tell users to disconnect their modems for several minutes to reset the PPPoE connections. Some enterprising users automated it with scripts. That didn't make it any less silly.

said by Moonlight_x :

Customizable caps:
- Premium: 100GB + N x $10/100GB
- Unlimited Bulk: 200GB + N x $15/250GB

...

said by neko :

Moonlight_x, what would you advocate as a cap on tek?

said by andyb :

How much and what tiers would you like to see if they were offered.Dont get nuts just be realistic.

said by neko :

Really? In what way?

said by ancodia :

Tek might have little say in what that cap will be.

said by neko :

Lets hope it will be a decent cap by Tek...

said by ancodia :

When Bell came up with that $15 line charge for resellers, I doubt they thought they would be dealing with 500g+ users. Since the charge is capped, their only recource may be to start enforcing data caps.

said by andyb :

No TS buys thier own and has zippo to do with bell regarding bandwidth.

said by Angelo_ :

i hope they'd make it like 10 cents a gig... but im just dreamin

said by somedontgetit :

some of you guys just dont get it

when teksavvy re sells the esrvice over the bell lines and at the co it will validate a teksavvy login its still over the bell world you only reach teksavvy after that authentication on the radius. all traffic passes through that login.

you might get this or that routing peering etc after that login but a teksavvy account is still tied to that single radius login whish is done via nexxia hardware.

unlike other such as primus and colba that in certain area have malcs...look that one up on google to see how they do it...they have equipment in the co s. the pricing structure is way way way diff when you log into a primus radius.. we use a diff term...but the reality is if a company doesnt have equipment in any given CO your still on the bell network as far as your sync rate goes and bell can throttle that port as they see fit your on the 3 rd party reseller configuration after you authenticate at the BELL resold port

said by Guspaz :

Actually, that is an unbelievable situation. Because Bell doesn't even have anywhere close to 50 thousand 500GB/mth+ users.[...]
Still, I can see the exodus being a problem. Just not the network-crippling one that you're talking about.

said by Guspaz :

I would be very surprised if they had that much bandwidth in total. It just wouldn't make sense, since they have peering directly into the US from both places, and traffic to other Canadian ISPs probably goes through providers at the closest PoP, rather than being backhauled to Ontario.

said by somedontgetit :

some of you guys just dont get it

when teksavvy re sells the service over the bell lines and at the co it will validate a teksavvy login its still over the bell world you only reach teksavvy after that authentication on the radius. all traffic passes through that login. at the BELL resold port

said by ftp1020 :

I can easily live under 200GB, so any future cap on my Unlimited that's above that is fine with me

Cap away, Rocky, no complaints from here.

said by neko :

Lets hope the price doesn't increase...

said by TOPDAWG :

And monkeys could fly out my butt and kill me.

said by Guspaz :

I'm sure everybody would be thrilled with a 500GB cap. It's a huge number that means that even the most ardent torrenters should have no problems keeping under it, and it'd give us a hard limit to work work for selling the service.

On the other hand, I'm sure a 300GB cap would still be more or less acceptable, but then you're starting to get further and further away from the outliers and more to the regular high-download users.

Either way, I hope that TSI comes to a decision quickly. I'm hoping the next few days, but I'm not optimistic...

said by Moonlight_x :

Hypothetical WoW case: assume ~50 000 of Quebec's finest 500GB/month people moved from Videotron/Bell to TSI Unlimited. 500GB/s is ~2Mbps continuous. 50 000 x 2Mbps = 100Gbps on Bell's ATM network between Montreal and Toronto to forward TSI's traffic. Bell not having that much spare capacity between the two provinces' core metropolitan networks (and from there to Chatham if that's where TSI's NOC happens to be) is not entirely unbelievable.

said by andyb :

No TS buys thier own and has zippo to do with bell regarding bandwidth.

said by Scoop18 :

300 to 500 gigs a month? You people need to get out more. :D

said by Bellunder :

Rocky ventured out west and found that Albertans are serious downloaders. Now that fault lies with Telus because they capped all the users so now finally they can download 100 gigs a month. Remember i said it first it's all Telus' fault. When it rains it pours first all the big time downloaders from Ontario are making themselves known and yes those Albertans won't change their habits.

said by recneps :

You should just split it up to unlimited exclusively over cogent, if it's that much cheaper, and premium would be over whichever network gave the best performance

said by AeroSt1f3r :

When are the peak time?

said by TSI Gabe :

LOL :D

said by JayMan :

*sits in the corner rocking himself and crying*

WILL SOMEONE THINK OF THE BANANA'S AND TIMBITS.

The time has come to crack open the head of the nearest TSI Employee and feast on the goo inside.

OH RICK WHERE ARE YOU.

said by neko :

If caps do come in, I would also like to see different tiers of service available. There are some who need 500Gb a month, others 200Gb. I would fall into the latter category, so a tiered approach would suit me fine - As long as the price is right ;

said by cluster5 :

If the caps a reasonable and there's a way for the user to purchase more bandwidth at reasonable costs. I don't see a problem.

said by Moonlight_x :

I am a big fan of tiers, promoter of customizable packages and sliding overage scales. Replace "Unlimited" by "Bulk" and offer Bulk customers the ability of customizing their plan with $10-15/250GB upgrades.

said by TSI Steve :

Right idea. All the prices cited are below the actual (direct) costs. It costs us more then what you've stated.

said by neko :

yeah I would like to know that too...

said by neko :

yeah I would like to know that too...

said by Black Moon :

A second issue is the following: how heavy is heavy? Is 300 GB/mo too much? Is it 200, 500?

said by Moonlight_x :

Cogent bandwidth costs ~$10/250GB... but all outbound traffic goes over Peer1 under normal circumstances IIRC - one of the TSI guys said something about this in another thread. The other backbones are more expensives, somewhere in the area of $10/150GB. Routing Unlimited traffic over Cogent is a cost-reduction measure to reduce losses on high usage accounts.

TSI charges $30/month, rents lines from Bell/Telus at ~$15/month, have something like $5/month in miscellaneous recurrent per-account operating costs and this leaves about $10 for bandwidth and profit... so, after ~250GB, an unlimited account becomes a loss-making account.

Bandwidth is not free and neither is it unlimited.

said by qweloo :

But wasnt the fact that premium and unlimited were on different peering network the way to make unlimited profitable ?

said by Angelo_ :

this will suck :(

said by R0CKY :

Huh... why would we want to tell you this?! ;)

I hear you.... You haven't had the chance to experience us much, but you'll quickly see, we're a little different on this front!

said by joshb :

Rocky,

Just do us all a huge favour...When you put new policies in place make sure people know about it....please make sure you publize it....Don't be like Telus or Bell or Rogers where you don't find out anything until you see the bill.....

Being very forward and very open about your abuse policies in the end is going to save you from bad publicity...

said by Angelo_ :

how i see it bell wants to cry foul get another gaint who'd love more clients :P, yah i agree if we were to merge our networks it would get very interesting

said by Angelo_ :

the small isp's could try to push them back ;)

said by R0CKY :

It's unfortunate that it's come to this but it's likely past the point of no return with the big boys at this point.

said by Angelo_ :

can't you team up with third party isps if you have to verizon and offer service through a new medium ie adsl2+ on a shared medium that no one party controls?

said by joshb :

All that being said I think your end of year prediction is right on the dot....

said by Angelo_ :

so no more unlimited???

said by R0CKY :

Rogers, Cogeco, Videotron, Shaw... They're all starting to clamp down too.... By Christmas, if all the trends hold, every single large TelCo and CableCo will have heavy downloaders either locked down/out or throttled.

Rocky

said by daboom :

Well Frozty2k, they already have stuff for ppl like you averagein out two months etc. Or so much per gb over after.

said by daboom :

Hear .. Hear to that.. I agree on the capping Unlimited side somethings that's in the fine print but made clear if you go over. If the Unlimited is in demand then it should be priced accordingly perhaps several ten's of dollars above premium. If they want it that bad they will pay for it. Esp if big players are capping. Just my 2 cents .. :)

said by R0CKY :

Rogers, Cogeco, Videotron, Shaw... They're all starting to clamp down too.... By Christmas, if all the trends hold, every single large TelCo and CableCo will have heavy downloaders either locked down/out or throttled.
Rocky

said by neko :

If Tek does put a cap on, I wouldn't mind as long as it's not 60Gb like the Cable companies. I see the number 500Gb being thrown around, that wouldn't be too bad. It's way more than I download in a month anyway, so it wouldn't affect me, but it would be nice to have a high cap.

said by Angelo_ :

so if it gets out of ocntrol does that mean taht tsi will lay their own lines??

said by R0CKY :

It would likely help us yes... For that matter, it would likely help all ISPs. Problem is that it would depend on how they all judge abusers. If they're simply using a tabbing system, then no matter....

said by Angelo_ :

how about offering cable internet :P hehe im so greedy :P

said by dmz :

Would the cost (to TekSavvy) be the same if this user confined his downloading to off-peak hours? (say, from 1am to 7am)

said by R0CKY :

It's overloading things when all the heavy users go at it at the same time.... It hurts in two ways. The pipe is running red hot through the prime times and to boot it's running a tab on the ISP from a transit stand point. From the TekSavvy side the 1TB user would cost something like $50-$60 to carry on a $30 return and $30 to $40 on a $10 login.... no clue on the Bell/Rogers side what the damage is, but it's significant enough that they'd want to do something about it.

said by Angelo_ :

maybe it's time to make partnerships with the states for bw... and take advantage of our dollar :P, also may let you sell to our friends south of the border!

said by Frozty2k :

The max $30 fee ? :D

said by Gwai Lo Dan :

Would / does Bell care if a $30 Teksavvy client downloads a TB? Is there any difference in cost to Bell if a person did the 1 TB download through a secondary Teksavvy account / primary Sympatico account?

said by Gwai Lo Dan :

Would / does Bell care if a $30 Teksavvy client downloads a TB? Is there any difference in cost to Bell if a person did the 1 TB download through a secondary Teksavvy account / primary Sympatico account?

said by R0CKY :

Who knows..... Believe I've seen a few discussions of late about sand vines in sympatico forums and other throttling means in Rogers/etc... Not sure if this is the solution for them or if they're simply planning on blacklisting users/locations. Everything is still unknown as of yet, but, as I've just stated..... People are wanting it all now, instead of in small bites/bytes, so it's causing large, uncontrollable spikes during prime times for the big boys and thus, they have to fight back.

said by Angelo_ :

so if it gets out of ocntrol does that mean taht tsi will lay their own lines??

said by Frozty2k :

Wow, I can't see people doing 1TB+ a month doing it for personal use. I mean, assuming most of it isn't streaming stuff etc, you would need a lot of space, HD's are cheap but not that cheap.

Companies do have the right to protect themselves and their users, all I ask is for the companies to be straightforward about it's policies / reasons and have actual packages for people to go to.

said by Angelo_ :

time to qos abusive people.. as much as we had traffic shaping its better then getting kicked off

said by HiVolt :

I hear ya... I'm gonna try to stay positive in the mean time. :)

said by R0CKY :

This is why we're sitting on the sidelines right now as this has been voiced and for what it's worth, it's understood, so they're trying to find a way to allow such activities that wouldn't cramp progress, but at the same time wouldn't allow the abusiveness.... Problem is, it's asking to have your cake and eat it too....

said by HiVolt :

Oh boy, this is certainly gonna get interesting, and not in a good way...

If Bell starts restricting logins to only the one ISP the user subscribes to, this is going to take away one of the biggest advantages of PPPoE DSL, and I'm not talking about the 500gb+ month hogs.

Takes away the troubleshooting advantages, multiple IP's on different computers or routers, gamers using one low latency connection for their online play, another low cost, higher latency connection for downloading, etc...

:(

said by Angelo_ :

i thought the ctrc ruled on this alrdy, thus allowing third party to offer services...

said by Angelo_ :

rocky we are waiting for you!

said by Marshal :

He mean that they are not offered anymore on the site