British Telecom Sheds Usage Caps

It is great to see that Europe starts to see the light while here our corporations stifle the growth of the Internet in the country that invented it.

Good job, Comcast and AT&T.

When Comcast targeted a specific protocol(like P2P) for network mgt, all hell broke loose and they were crucified by many. But when BT does the same thing, it is Europe sees the light? Consistency please.
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because no one forsaw that comcast would turn to caps. If they knew back then the choice would be protocol managment or caps. well things would be differenet wouldn't they?

Not everybody can be as "consistent" as you defending any anti-customer measure a greedy corporation adopts. ANY measure that gives more the customer for its money is a good one in my book. That is what free competition would generate.

Comcast is targeting a specific protocol: it's called internet video and it comes in HD.

Comcast doesn't want to face the fact that it's a dumb pipe....

Not fooling me Comcast...

What Comcast did was to hack into the users P2P stream and insert a 'end data transfer command'. You can call that 'traffic management', but everyone else calls it hacking.
Still no reports on Comcast executives being sent to jail for a few years for that crime.

Can we change that to Europe 1 / US and Canada 0?

The internet was invented in the UK too.

No way! Al Gore is American!
Seriously, you might want to give this a quick read...
»en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hi ··· Internet
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Pick two...

British Telecom is as bad as AT&T and Comcast from what I have read but at least there dropping the limits.

Hey Comcast 250GB Cap defenders!

Explain this one...

We're waiting...

Well, I guess we will hear now how British Telecom is bad and encourages piracy. The starving artists. Would anybody think of the children ??!!

Comcast doesn't have a dedicated pipe to the home. BT does.

Now if you replaced Comcast with AT&T (and their new caps) then we've got something to talk about

"Crickets"... (chirp, chirp)....

Not buying that reason...

TWC doesn't have caps... Probably due to its "fiber" network.

TWC tried caps...remember? Then they backed down.

Pretty sure Comcast has more fiber in their network than TWC anyway, and Grande Communications, with no caps, has less. *shrugs*

Virgin in the UK has unlimited DOCSIS 3 cable. They charge ~50 dollars for 50 mbits IIRC, although they throttle if there's congestion during peak periods.

Comcast's cap hasn't moved in 3 years either. There's no excuse.

How low does Virgin's throttle go though? I may need to grab a D3 modem soon to deal with congestion issues I'm seeing on my 12M service on Comcast, but when I had a D3 modem I would get advertised speeds 24x7 as long as Comcast didn't screw anything up on their provisioning side, which was rare.

I'd rather have a soft cap that I don't hit anyway and no throttling than service that slows down to a few Mbps during peak hours, the hours that I want to use the service during anyway.

What's great about this situation is that not very long ago BT was even worse than AT&T. Then the government forcibly separated its vertical monopoly into a retail and wholesale sector, and enforced line-sharing on its copper lines, bringing down prices across the board.

Competitors are still lobbying the government to enforce line-sharing on BT's fiber and IIRC their cable lines as well.

It's yet another example of government regulation enforcing competition working wonders on the industry and spurring the incumbents to invest in their network.

Does not apply here for our corporate government. They are here to use the revolving door policy, encourage the regulatory capture, encourage monopolies and make sure corporations pay as little taxes as possible if any while massive wars of conquest for the benefit or corporations are paid in blood and money by the regular citizens treated like dirt and fired so they cannot qualify for a pension.

Good work, America, the "shining beacon to the world".

So I guess you'll be moving back to the old country now?
Land of the free and all that good stuff...

Having a problem with Germans, my worm friend ? I have some nice East German jackboots, you know.

German scientists are part of the reason we came to dominate scientifically and economically post WW2.

Great Britain has gone from imposing the Tea Tax and Stamp Act to eliminating usage caps. The U.S. has gone from resisting the Tea Tax and Stamp Act to imposing usage caps.
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I don't have a problem!

So they're shedding the hard caps on specific >300GB users, and instead applying systems to slow down specific protocols including P2P during times of congestion.

This doesn't point toward upgrades in the network, it's points toward continued congestion in the network when just limiting the >300GB users; that wasn't enough, and now they plan to throttle all P2P, affecting all peer to peer users.

This is a step backward, not forward! The PR is spin.

-Dane Jasper
CEO
Sonic.net

Quit ATT. Dump em en masse and then they'll cry and whine and probably even ask the feds for a handout like the banks, GM, etc. ATT deserves the coming bankruptcy.

most others will move over to capped internet. They will simply start caps for those signing up after a certain date.

It is happening it seems to just about everyone...or maybe I should say that even those who have not done it seem to be discussing it more and more.

Having had caps in the past AND been forced to limit my usage based on the cap, I shake my head at the utter garbage it is. I am not a "heavy user" whatsoever yet I am forced to limit what I do. What a joke.

I have unlimited for my iPhone and plan on continuing that until I run out. If AT&T tries to cancel it, I will switch to another company in a heartbeat that gives me a better data deal

We should pay for what we use. We pay for electricity such that financial disincentives kick in for big users. But that is not what is happening here. Instead we are being told that we have stingy quotas that will cause many people to go without service because they are at their cap for the month. Imagine your electric company cutting off power to your home on the 15th because you hit your quota for the month. Really? Is that what you want us to accept?

Regulation is the answer. ISP's need to become regulated utilities that get audited just like the gas and electric companies. This is a vital step that needs to be taken now. The new draconian usage caps (i.e., quota's) are a sure sign that we have reached that stage where a vital resource cannot be entrusted to private enterprise without regulation and direction.

The caps are a sure sign that ATT cannot manage this issue on its own. It has taken the wrong steps in dealing with the no free lunch issue. Pay for your lunch - yes. Take away half your lunch - no. Starving America is not the correct solution is you want the country to grow.