Do Data Caps Make Good Business Sense for ISPs?

I am taking a shot in the air here but you are either a shill for the industry,or are rich as hell. blah blah blah

EDIT: I think people need to remember that it's their network and we all pay for access. If they want to be greedy then don't make deals with them and let them go bankrupt. Until they don't start bleeding customers not a single company will listen because at the end of the day you still pay the bill.

LOL xp

EDIT: I think people need to remember that it's their network and we all pay for access. If they want to be greedy then don't make deals with them and let them go bankrupt. Until they don't start bleeding customers not a single company will listen because at the end of the day you still pay the bill.

LOL xp

EDIT: I think people need to remember that it's their network and we all pay for access. If they want to be greedy then don't make deals with them and let them go bankrupt. Until they don't start bleeding customers not a single company will listen because at the end of the day you still pay the bill.

did isp's forget to upgrade any of there network and just put a giant band aids on there network to get by because all the years I have lived in my city which has been for 30 years the only upgrade I have ever seen was the docsis 3.0 upgrade.

Actually, I think pnh102 is one of the few obviously rich exec type that's not a shill posting here.

Take that energy and throw it at our paid off regulators, who made things the way they are with franchises(even for unserved areas) and other bs all for the sake of a buck. They are the ones betraying us.

That's my other big beef against caps. In every state, any product or service that is sold by unit has to have whatever meter or scales used to measure out the quantities regulated, inspected and verified to be accurate.

The classic example I use is a gas station that would get into a lot of trouble if the gas pumps were not certified to actually be pumping what they say they pumped. I see no reason why caps on broadband should not be subject to the same scrutiny.

2. Upgrade the networks but leave the caps the same, or lower them. More customers will hit the cap faster.

There's 2 scenarios under which an ISP can make a lot of money with a cap:

1. Caps and overages give ISPs a huge disincentive against upgrading their networks. Why spend the millions of dollars on upgrades to allow for higher speeds when you can pocket the money spent on overages instead?

Or:

2. Upgrade the networks but leave the caps the same, or lower them. More customers will hit the cap faster.

Either scenario is a big winner for the ISPs.

Most customers ration usage and are unable to cancel their expensive cable TV plans. Others pay double for the same service they had before as "business class" customers, as if they are operating Fortune 500 IT departments in their homes.

My friend in Sacramento, calif had to switch over to business class for comcast. In order to get the same pricing as when he had residential he had to sign for a 5 year contract. I'd rather stick a knife in my gut than be locked in for that long.

My friend in Sacramento, calif had to switch over to business class for comcast. In order to get the same pricing as when he had residential he had to sign for a 5 year contract. I'd rather stick a knife in my gut than be locked in for that long.

Neither of those explain Comcast's cap implementation, which has no overages. If a user exceeds Comcast's 250 GB cap, something that is more and more likely to occur as time goes on, Comcast simply cuts off service.

I thought they would "ask" you to go to the business class service. But either way, as much as I hate caps, I have to say Comcast's is the least worst implementation. They could actually make a genuine argument about it being about network congestion management.

Or did you think that VoIP somehow magically works without sending or receiving data?

How does a cap interfere with VoIP?

third party does impact the cap, However VOIP also does not use that much bandwidth. you can get crystal clear calls on minimal bandwidth usage.

odds are you would have to be on the phone nonstop for the whole month to equal a day of streaming high quality video.

From what I've read you can't actually get the business class service without a business tax ID so unless someone is running a business out of there home, there's no way to switch to business class.

from a moral standpoint they do not make sense in that they market you lots of speed to do lots of broadband things(heck they even pimp the shit out of "you can stream HD video"). but the cap is a Gotcha if you actually use the service as advertised on TV.

The caps are being implemented to prevent something from coming along that would drastically increase the customer demand for an increase in data usage. Caps are being set at a number that the ISP engineers feel is acceptable to allow for the network to operate efficiently with their current build-out plans.

It is simply a preventative measure that protects the business from being blindsided by some new, must-have service that would otherwise have their customers gobbling up bandwidth at a rate the ISPs promised when sold, but realistically are not prepared to actually provide. With these caps in place, the ISP can update the infrastructure at their own pace, without having to be worried about consumer demand and standard market tactics interfering and forcing competition to take root.

That's the essence of non-Net Neutrality, isn't it?

Also, who here actually expects the ISP's to raise their caps anytime soon? Anyone? The ISP's will soon release statements claiming that "Consumers dont want caps raised" and that their studies found that "99.9% of customers say caps dont need to be raised"

Now, I understand that those who use 250gb are likely to be the tech-forum people....but considering how many people just around here use that number....I just can't believe a more % is not hitting the caps.

So only 2% of customers are affected by caps. Can such a small amount of customers really affect the performance of the other 98%?

Lies, greedy corporate capitalist gobblins!

Bandwidth hogs are a Myth!

FREE THE WEB!

#OccupyTheInternet!

#OccupyTheInternet!

(You left out a comma by the way. )

No, I'm not referring to "parenthetical" commas (though, to be honest, you're actually missing a pair--just in different places):
1) offset the name of a person being addressed
2) separate 2 subordinate clauses
(I only mention these at all because they "stand out". )

Great article, Rich. I think we need more articles like this so more attention is focused on the real motivation behind caps.

I'm not usually one to publicly comment on grammar, but this article is chock full of egregious grammatical errors. Did anyone proof this thing or just paste it directly from first draft to print?

This is a trend I am starting to see more often on the web, and it drives me batty.

Stop complaining and buy the dedicated capacity you expect via a business line.

You can add Mediacom to the list of ISPs that have a data cap.

»www.mediacomtoday.com/aup

I guess it would be a soft cap since Mediacom does not have a specific schedule of overage charges and does not provide a way for the customer to monitor their usage.