Frontier Confirms Cap Plans → Re: I would be afraid to be a Frontier Customer

1st, why would they do that? And 2nd, you contact Frontier and tell them that someone has initiated a DOS attack against your IP. And 3rd, Frontier will be making available a tool to check bandwidth use throughout the month and you could see if someone was doing that.

His example may not be the best, but the concern I would say is very real when you are talking about such paltry offerings with such high overages. The availability of such a meter is (should be) a requirement, but the expectation that a customer will monitor that meter daily is not realistic. For real world comparisons, look at cellular data charges, cellular minutes (read: parents and teenagers) or even your own ATM transactions. While most people do eventually realize the fraudulent ATM transactions on their own even if their bank does not contact them, it is usually after a fair amount of transaction have already occurred.

i could not agree more. these usage based plans have so much flaw in their design that it is just asking for problems. i can't wait to see what the first DoS attack against an entire block of ip addresses gets a bunch of customers over their quota and nets the ISP a huge profit.

these kinds of plans are so ugly that it really makes me sick whenever i think of how they could be abused.

another example:

lets say that someone with stock in a major bell company decides to add a little revenue regularly to said company. all they would have to do is send massive ammounts of data (using botnets maybe?) to said bell companies customers ip blocks. across the board overages. not that the isp would care. they would just send the bill with the overages. maybe giving customers a comp whenever they would call in and complain about it. and thats a big maybe there.

And, an you tell me with a straight face that you *really* believe that this program will find 100% immediate adaptability and be used in all the homes of their customers? and even if it somehow is, how can the customers be made to actually use it? Will it's usage be monitored or enforced like the caps?

No.

They WILL instead see the inevitable "I didn't know my [insert name] was [downloading/uploading] [insert type of content], so please don't charge me an extra [insert overage $$$ amount] this month. I cant afford to pay this because [insert excuse why] I *REALLY* need my internet to [insert reason why service needs to be kept on]"....

It looks like their legal department will be getting a workout

ISPs can easily enable page redirects displaying current bandwidth usage stats and/or enable browser pop-ups when customers reach predefined criteria, e.g. when you reach 80% of your monthly cap. ISPs can also relatively easily place customers into a walled garden until they customers acknowledge they are going over the limit and additional charges will apply. It's not hard to "force" customers to use a tool. It will be much more difficult to educate customers how the news caps will limit their service similar to cell phone plans.

Do you look at your electric meter or your water meter daily? The concept of monitoring your bandwidth usage and paying for usage is no different. If customers are concerned about maintaining costs for electricity, water, broadband, cell phones, ATM transactions, etc., they will take appropriate action.

Nice try.

No, I do not look at my electric meter daily. However, I know that if I keep my light on it uses a (more of less) fixed amount of electricity per second. Same with most of the items that use electricity in my home. This and other highly predictable factors in electricity use means I can tell you with extreme confidence that my electric bill will be in the $90/mo range during the summer, $80/mo in the winter.

However, when I load up a web page, I have no idea how much bandwidth will be used. I could load up BBR one hour and it will use x amount of bandwidth and then reload it in 30 mins and it will use y amount of bandwidth. Multiply that uncertainty by a couple thousand web page visits for the month and multiply it again by the number of folks (PCs) in your household and soon a household will have no idea how much bandwidth they are consuming.

PLUS, add in a xbox360, Wii, two smart phones with wifi, a PS3, a DVR connected to the router and whatever else and then it really gets ugly.

Bandwidth is more akin to cell phone usage. Like bandwidth, I have no idea how many minutes I will be using per month because of the nature of communication (largely unpredictable). I can predict my water and electricity on the other hand with virtually pinpoint accuracy. It pretty much follows a strict seasonal pattern. The unpredictability of cell phone usage is what prompts me to buy a 1000 min plan even tho my cell usage ranges from nil to close to 1000 min per month.

BTW, Frontier's caps are insulting. I advise folks living in their footprint to raise hell.

I agree that bandwidth consumption is akin to cell phone usage, hence why I included it in my statement. The fact of the matter remains, if consumers are concerned about consumption, they will determine an effective means to monitor that consumption.

I also agree that Frontier's relatively low cap number being thrown around are questionable. The same can be said for TWC's numbers. The proof is in the pudding and we'll see what happens when these companies make official announcements and roll out their plans.

Do you pay overage if you go over x gallons? No? Ok, then that is the delima of why you don't actually check your utility meters. What would you do if after using x kilowatts of electricity your charge/ kilowatt goes up by 100% I'll be you will be keeping a close eye on your meter.

What action do you suspect they take? I would grab a baseball bat and goto the headquarters and tell the secretary that the head CEO's got 1 min before I break down the door. Either you will goto jail or solve the problem, more than likely goto jail but its a good way to *try* to solve said problem . Especially if you have the whole town with baseball bats....the CEO will probably listen to their demands .

In reality, if 1 person is fed up with it...more than likely there are others, so what you do is get enough people together to drop the service where they can't afford their (frontier) bills. If you don't want to do that, then tough, put up with your crappy service. Money does talk.

SRP and APS in AZ both do that. you get the first 2000kwh at one rate, go over that and you pay more per kwh.

Sure I do. I pay a base fee for my water and then pay per quantity used above that.My electrical company charges a base rate and then charges rates based on quantity of kWh used. Different kWh used are charged at different rates. I believe this to be a fairly common practice, so you may want to look at your utility bills.Best advice one can give. Voting with your wallet is the best way for you to communicate with your ISP (or any business for that matter) about how you feel about their service.

...and to make matters worse, there cap is based on your download AND upload usage.