Suddenlink → [Rant] Suddenlinks Bandwith Limit Policy

Okay folks, just read all the older posts about SL and their limitations placed on customers. I noticed that so far over the last 12 days I have used over 54gb in usage, so I logged into their technical chat window and asked if there was a charge for high usage. I wished I would have been thinking at the time and I would have copied the chat to post here, but I didn't sorry. The long and short of it was this...
In my area, Amarillo, Texas they WILL BE IMPLEMENTING a bandwidth limitation policy within the next few months. This limitation will be double the average usage and as far as she new Tracey P. when you reached that usage you would be cut off till the next billing cycle. I asked about them having an "Unlimited Usage" package and she was unsure about that option. I install networks for customers here in Amarillo. When they ask me who to use, I suggest SL. They almost always go with my suggestion. When this policy takes effect I will no longer be suggesting SL to anyone. I have my CCDA and my MCSE so typically my suggestions are followed to the letter. Funny how those two little pieces of paper hanging on my wall do that. Anyway, this post is to clear up any confusion about IF they are doing this. According to Tracey P. in technical support, IT IS GOING TO HAPPEN! She said that Technical Support is kept ignorant of the changes till they occur. (What kind of unprofessional policy is that???) Either that or she was telling me a lie and she knew about everything and was not telling me. Whatever the case, it is wrong. I guess I've ranted enough.

GhoztSurfer

I've never known an ISP to implement bandwidth restrictions on BUSINESS customers. So any recommendations to businesses would be fine.

I will not be concerned unless SL makes an official announcement. Until that happens, your post is just rumor. Besides, As with most bw caps, they only affect less than like 5% of subscribers. The bandwidth hogs ruin it for the rest of us.

Hi nnaarrnn.

Do you or anybody in here know the approximate cost for BUSINESS accounts?

Actually the cost for business accounts is only slightly higher as the service is slightly quicker and they guarantee 98% up time. I called a tech today and asked, cost is about 10% higher according to him.

Thanks for the instant (wow) reply.

Are you maybe considering one?

I'll check one of the bills when I get to the office tomorrow.

How is it when a company cannot supply a proper amount of bandwidth they blame it on bandwidth hogs.

I have used this much so far this month
September 2011 (Incoming: 277021 MB / Outgoing: 7088 MB)

Wow that's alot until you look that it was mostly 7 days of usage for the whole month.

I spend $65 a month for the 25meg plan. I think it is funny when I get a letter saying the average usage is 70 gigs a month because this is so much BS. The wholesale rate is a nickle or so a gig. So my 280 gig of data cost them $14. And that will leave them $51 in profit. I say BS this is to keep me from using netflix and having to us suddenlink on demand.

Keep an eye on Stop the Cap (»stopthecap.com) today for some important news on this subject. We are waiting to hear back from the company, but suspect we'll have some disturbing news for all Suddenlink customers to report.

Hmmm. I pay $69 / mo for 6 Mb/s commercial and $107 / mo for 107 Mb/s residential. Me thinks it's a little more than 10%.

If Suddenlink implements a cap, that will effectively signal the beginning of the end for that company. Even in areas such as mine where there is no other broadband provider -- Frontier DSL doesn't count -- people will discontinue their service. Unhappy customers become former customers, and former customers are lost profit. It's that simple.

Kudos to AricBrown for figuring out the primary reasoning behind this: Suddenlink On-Demand. Maintaining a VOD service can't be cheap, especially with licensing fees and whatnot, so they need to recoup their losses any way they can. Limiting bandwidth makes Netflix a less likely option, and On-Demand more likely by default.

It would be interesting to hear Pete Abel's input on this issue.

I disagree with bandwidth caps as much as the next guy but I also realize that a very small percent of all customers would even be affected by it.

ATT published that less than 2% of its users will even hit the caps they implemented. Presuming that Suddenlink offered generous caps that would also only affect 2% of their customers, then I seriously doubt that capping only 2% of Suddenlink's broadband customers will cause Suddenlink as a company to come to an end.

»techcrunch.com/2011/03/1 ··· dth-cap/

IMHO as a ex-SL customer is this: The make claims that will not hold water (28.8 is the defacto dial up speed) and they lie when they are oversold which is most of the time because this NJ company is parsimonious when it comes to upgrades and buying upgraded equipment.

I was on an AT&T loopback six blocks from the CO in the same town. I was off line 20 minutes once in four years and I was not throttled; I had zero trouble with broadband.

SL always had problems in my town and someone always had a cleverly couched reason why - which was usually the customer's fault. THEY (all providers) were using that same lame excuse in 1992 when dialup in rural America was a rural disaster for all.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, and I wish someone from Suddenlink would have responded to our request for an interview sent to multiple people earlier today, but here we go:

»stopthecap.com/2011/09/2 ··· mit-fee/

I dumped ATT because of their cap.. I now plan on holding suddenlink to the law

§ 17.004. CUSTOMER PROTECTION STANDARDS. (a) All buyers
of telecommunications and retail electric services are entitled to:
(1) protection from fraudulent, unfair, misleading,
deceptive, or anticompetitive practices, including protection from
being billed for services that were not authorized or provided;
(2) choice of a telecommunications service provider, a
retail electric provider, or an electric utility, where that choice
is permitted by law, and to have that choice honored;
(3) information in English and Spanish and any other
language as the commission deems necessary concerning rates, key
terms and conditions, and the basis for any claim of environmental
benefits of certain production facilities;
(4) protection from discrimination on the basis of
race, color, sex, nationality, religion, marital status, income
level, or source of income and from unreasonable discrimination on
the basis of geographic location;
(5) impartial and prompt resolution of disputes with a
certificated telecommunications utility, a retail electric
provider, or an electric utility and disputes with a
telecommunications service provider related to unauthorized
charges and switching of service;
(6) privacy of customer consumption and credit
information;
(7) accuracy of metering and billing;

My dd-wrt router gives me excellent stats.. I will sure as heck make sure suddenlink has a proper state regulated meter.

edit--- yes I know it will be a push to make suddenlink accountable under these laws but it can be done

Considering this newly available information, I believe that Pete Abel or someone else of standing should provide more information, particularly specifics re: throughput allowances per speed tier and when to expect this nonsense in markets outside of Amarillo. It's not too much to ask when you realize how much we pay already, coupled with some of us will having to drastically alter our online habits or switch to (the massively overpriced) business class internet. It's patently unfair to spring something like this on your customers, and a reputable company wouldn't think of it in the first place.

Your move, Suddenlink.

74GB better not be my cap... If so that is absolutely ridiculous. My bill is already 160-170 a month I would be happy to get rid of it SL.

Also yay for stop the cap using my usage pic

very much, im gettin fed up with the company, weve had disconnections over the last year about 5 times, and no it wasnt my internet, it was the town..

and now they wanna do this if that cap is lower than 150 gb im gone and the whole city will leave to, i live in a small town which people ask me all the time who to get service from

The thing is...in west Texas there are very few congestion problems at the node. They have no real reason to do this. Almost every west Texas market has Docsis 3.0 and hardly any slowdowns at night.

They have been adding more VOD channels which are the same as any other DOCSIS channel...but it's to make more money, not to "recoup losses"

Same here. They're already bleeding me dry, and now they go and pull this crap? It's greed, plain and simple. Yet another way for slimy corporate types to siphon even more out of our wallets simply because they think they can. At least in my case, they're wrong. I'm paying $60/month for the 20 MB package, and the only business class package that's comparable in price is 6 MB for $69.95/month. An extra ten bucks to get 14 MB less download speed? That's rape, folks.

It's almost as if they're going out of their way to make Netflix users, online gamers, YouTube watchers, and other "heavy downloaders" miserable, even though we represent an almost infinitesimal portion of their subscriber base and could easily be dealt with by being told when we're screwing over others on the same node. But nooooo. Gotta get that money. If you don't have enough $100 bills to stuff a king size mattress, you're not doing it right, apparently.

And what about those of us that use many different programs, some of which update frequently? I'm not going to put off updating the latest Firefox nightly because of a bandwidth cap. I damn well shouldn't have to. What if I want to try a new flavor of Linux? "Well, that's a 500 MB ISO, so I'll just have to wait until next month so I can still check my e-mail this month." That's bullshit. Complete bullshit.

If they want to go ahead with this, more power to them. Go right ahead. I'll be laughing my ass off when, before the next fiscal year is over, they're filing for Chapter 11 protection. Perhaps that will make Jerry Kent look a little less smug in the next Suddenlink Home Security commercial. As it is, he looks like the cat that ate the canary. It's a shame he didn't choke on it.

If this whole thing is about not wanting people to cut the tv then they are doing it wrong cause this is only making me want to drop that part of my bill more so I can pay for the overages on my net and just download the shows i like. If caps do go through then those with tv/net bundle should stay at unlimited. If not so long.

well if they put caps in it will sucks for those that game like me..I have no clue what our usage is as we have not got the letter telling us..so Im not sure how to find out.

yeah everytime i log into steam i have around 1+gb to download, and I'm not the only one that games in my house.

STC has posted the updated caps:

150GB per month for customers subscribing to “lite” tiers of less than 10Mbps, similar to what AT&T limits its DSL customers;
250GB per month for 10, 15, or 20Mbps customers, similar to AT&T U-verse;
350GB per month for premium-priced 50 or 107Mbps service packages.

»stopthecap.com/2011/09/3 ··· comment/

Guess Ill take my 20MB back down to 10MB.

ya, im not the only one in the house that games to..there 2 of us that play wow and other online games..and 1 that has netflix too. and with wow patch your talking 15gb most of the time when the do patchs and if you happen to redownload the game thats 25 gbs

maybe being in wv I might get lucky..hell they cant even give me the speed I pay for..im sure not going to pay for using to much tell I get what I pay for

Especially if you want to check out the PTR...

Suddenlink High-Speed Internet: "If you want to do anything online outside of e-mailing your grandmother, prepared to get plowed in the can."

Upon further reflection, here's something - From Stop the Cap!: “...there doesn’t seem to be any justification for these limits other than the fact their biggest competitor in Texas — AT&T — has them.”

Is it not counterproductive to emulate your competition when they're engaging in practices that anger their users? And in addition to that, wouldn't Suddenlink benefit from being the "cool" ISP that doesn't cap? They could be the company that AT&T customers turn to when the capping becomes too much of a problem.

I'm kinda surprised that the 50mb & 107mb have the same LOW cap. You'd think that in order to get more people into the higher packages (better profit margin) they'd have much larger caps.

250 GB for the 10 plan is pretty reasonable. I had the same thing on Comcast, and much like my Suddenlink usage, rarely went over 35-40. (Yes, includes Netflix usage.)