nefar
join:2003-05-28
Park Forest, IL
| Bandwidth Caps?
Hello,
I've just heard about ATT instituting bandwidth caps. I've been a customer of ATT since they started to offer dsl under the flag of "Ameritech" back then.. I have not received any information direct from ATT about any proposed limits to my account, however a friend of mine told me about it today.
1.) Has there been an official announcement on this and if so what are the caps going to be?
2.) Have they offered a way to ascertain how much bandwidth your account has been averaging over previous months? (if detectable with new modems will they be supplying new modems to old customers)
3.) If one goes over the monthly cap what is the deterrent? Higher costs, account shut down et cetera?
4.) Do cable companies cap their lines and if so what is their average cap? |
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TheDuck
join:2003-06-22
Eastlake, OH | Look at: »Bandwidth caps are a com'in |
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NormanS
Premium,MVM
join:2001-02-14
San Jose, CA
 ·Pacific Bell - SBC
1 edit | reply to nefar
said by nefar  :4.) Do cable companies cap their lines and if so what is their average cap? Yes. Hard to average: Comcast caps are at 250 GB per month. Road Runner is testing 5 GB per month caps in one of their Texas markets. Cox is, reportedly, 50 GB per month. Qwest (another "Baby Bell" descendant) also has caps, though I don't recall that they ever published a number.
Verizon is not talking about caps.
I find it interesting that those companies talking/testing caps all provide TV content (Qwest and AT&T via IPTV). Not sure why Verizon isn't jumping on the bandwagon; I don't imagine that they have a lot more network capacity than AT&T. But it does have the appearance of media content providers (selling TV channel packages to cable and IPTV providers) attempting to squelch competition from TCP/IP providers of video content. Lower revenues for them if people pull content from providers such as Veoh, YouTube, Hulu, and others. This will also affect satellite VOD which, typically, relies on the satellite subscriber to have an HSI connection to move the content.
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Norman
~Oh Lord, why have you come
~To Konnyu, with the Lion and the Drum |
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nefar
join:2003-05-28
Park Forest, IL
| reply to nefar
Yea, I personally think they are just trying to position themselves for larger profits down the road. Websites are becoming more and more bandwidth intensive, tv streaming, the online tv plans, movies et cetera. They know damn well that in a couple years there will be more and more demand for bandwidth so why not force everyone into a higher price plan now. |
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nogard666
join:2004-05-03
Lawrence, KS
| I am betting that Verizon is not talking about caps because unlike most other companies, they are better then 95% fiber supplied, and from what I have read (though my info is about 6 months out of date). Even their FIOS network runs fiber all the way to the user end. A fiber line the exact same size of a standard copper phone line can handle 60,000 times as much data transfer, so if pretty much all of their system is fiber then they already have a huge benefit over all other providers. |
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NormanS
Premium,MVM
join:2001-02-14
San Jose, CA
·Pacific Bell - SBC
| said by nogard666 :I am betting that Verizon is not talking about caps because unlike most other companies, they are better then 95% fiber supplied, and from what I have read (though my info is about 6 months out of date). You don't think AT&T has as much fiber at the core as Verizon? Base on what information? I'd guess that the main difference in fiber deployment, between AT&T and Verizon, is at the core.
I would note that Charter is not talking caps, either, that I can see. And the Comcast caps are damned generous, despite an obvious last mile capacity weakness.
The companies are all over the map on this, with some, whom you would think would have serious capacity issues not implementing caps, one, who arguably has some capacity issues implementing generous caps, one, whose capacity ought to be equal, or better to the generous caps being tight with them. No consistency whatsoever, other than delivery of media content, and pressure from the media purveyors to milk users for all the $$$ that they can.
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Norman
~Oh Lord, why have you come
~To Konnyu, with the Lion and the Drum |
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unknown user
@sbcglobal.net | reply to nefar
I'm curious as to whether or not these caps apply to the small business packages. Does anyone in the current test market know? |
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