My Response to AT&T Data Caps

[Fritzo]

OK, I have 4 people in my house that do nothing but watch Youtube and nexfilx daily. We watch 2-3 netflix shows, and use Youtube all day long. We're lucky if we use 40GB a month.

Seriously, 250GB is crazy high. I'll venture to say if you're using that much, you're doing something illegal or need to go outside more often.

I know I'm going to hear the "BUT I WATCH 1080p MOVIES EVERY DAY!" Even then, that traffic is compressed to the point that it only registers as 1/4 of it's original size. This isn't as big a deal as people are making it out to be.

 

[Engineer]

Its no different than paying for electricity, or water.

I really don't understand the irrational arguments over this.

Fine, lower my costs to what they should be for such a plan (minimal service fee such as $8 or so - just like my gas) then usage. Also, force the ISP's to remove ALL ads as I am not willing to pay for metered usage and ads streaming into my home and I having to pay for them.

Finally, force ISP's to block FLASH websites if there are alternative versions (Non flash) as I don't need to pay for flash high usage sites when simple sites will suffice.

Let's see how well Google does when it's ad revenue gets cut off.

 

[QueBert]

And to the people who have 4 people in the house who watch Netflix a lot, don't they limit it to 1 stream at a time per account? Are there really homes that have 4 people who each have their own Netflix account and watch HD movies from the second they get home until they go to bed?

 

[Patranus]

Fine, lower my costs to what they should be for such a plan (minimal service fee such as $8 or so - just like my gas) then usage. Also, force the ISP's to remove ALL ads as I am not willing to pay for metered usage and ads streaming into my home and I having to pay for them.

Finally, force ISP's to block FLASH websites if there are alternative versions (Non flash) as I don't need to pay for flash high usage sites when simple sites will suffice.

Let's see how well Google does when it's ad revenue gets cut off.

You don't understand.

Your monthly costs ARE for that minimal service of 250GB per month.

Force ISPs to block FLASH? You make the CHOICE to go to those web sites. If you don't like FLASH or advertisements then don't go to sites with FLASH or advertisements or complain to the site operators but it has NOTHING to do with your ISP.

You are buying 250GB per month for whatever you want, FLASH and advertisements are irrelevant to your ISP.

People CHOOSE how to use their bandwidth. If you CHOOSE to use more you pay more.

Not sure why this is such a hard concept to grasp.

Do I wish prices were lower? Sure I do, like any other consumer, but to bitch bitch bitch about caps is stupid.

 

[Engineer]

I don't use anywhere near that cap so at this point, doesn't matter. If my ISP implements a cap and I have to pay anything extra, I'll look to switch, simple as that. Called them a few months ago about the price going to high and told them that I was leaving after 18 years. The bill is now $27.xx lower per month to keep me.

And I agree, I'll use Adblockers and if the sites work around it, I would simply blocks the sites at the router level or Hosts file.

Oh, and my comment wasn't lowering for a 250GB level, it was to pay for all metered service just like electric/water/gas. Give me a small fee and charge a low rate for every GB downloaded/uploaded. If you want it like utilities, do it the right way that way my and thousands of other's bills will be lowered.

Finally, let's push for cable channel choices by the channel. Why should I pay for stuff that I don't want or watch. Lower my bill by giving me a choice to get rid of the crap instead of the bundling stuff.

Oh, and this is just a pre-cursor to either lowering the limits or leaving them at a certain point while data usage catches up and more and more people get caught up in it. spidey07 nailed it (really, he did)...but it's just like the AMT which he hates so very much, lol.

 

[QueBert]

You don't understand.

Your monthly costs ARE for that minimal service of 250GB per month.

Force ISPs to block FLASH? You make the CHOICE to go to those web sites. If you don't like FLASH or advertisements then don't go to sites with FLASH or advertisements or complain to the site operators but it has NOTHING to do with your ISP.

You are buying 250GB per month for whatever you want, FLASH and advertisements are irrelevant to your ISP.

People CHOOSE how to use their bandwidth. If you CHOOSE to use more you pay more.

Not sure why this is such a hard concept to grasp.

Do I wish prices were lower? Sure I do, like any other consumer, but to bitch bitch bitch about caps is stupid.

The pay more thing makes sense, but many ISP's have a cap, period. You cannot pay for more bandwidth, if you go over you either get throttled to dial up speeds. Or risk getting your service cut off. I know the providers are all about making money so the fact many won't sell you more bandwidth makes absolutely no sense to me.

 

[KMFJD]

OK, I have 4 people in my house that do nothing but watch Youtube and nexfilx daily. We watch 2-3 netflix shows, and use Youtube all day long. We're lucky if we use 40GB a month.

Seriously, 250GB is crazy high. I'll venture to say if you're using that much, you're doing something illegal or need to go outside more often.

I know I'm going to hear the "BUT I WATCH 1080p MOVIES EVERY DAY!" Even then, that traffic is compressed to the point that it only registers as 1/4 of it's original size. This isn't as big a deal as people are making it out to be.

an hour of netflix alone is around 1gb , your 40gb a month does not compute

 

[QueBert]

an hour of netflix alone is around 1gb , your 40gb a month does not compute

That's HD, since he just said Netflix I'll assume he meant SD. Which weights in at much less than a gig an hour. SD content's around 300-350mb an hour.

 

[StrangerGuy]

They dropped my local ISP WoW packets in America. I live in Singapore. Great, even if I have no reason to deal with shitty America ISPs I still have to face with the unplayable laggy shit because they are screwing us a few thousand miles away from the West Coast. Thankfully they sorted this bullshit awhile back.

 

[olds]

...In summary...

Uh, not so much.

 

[Golgatha]

Its no different than paying for electricity, or water.

I really don't understand the irrational arguments over this.

I don't see the relationship. It costs real resources to produce electricity and clean water. Those metered resources are also expected to have 99.9999% uptime and a physical meter attached at the source so the homeowner can easily monitor their usage.

Data packets on the other hand have a fixed infrastructure cost, which goes towards the maintenance of the network they are passing through. This cost is fixed and it doesn't matter if 250GB or 250TB of data pass through it; the cost is the same.

Also, since they value 50GB of transfer at $10, why don't they have a fully metered option and charge 80% of their customers $10 per month? What they really want to do is put the caps in place and make you pay more to transfer video data that's not purchased from them. Plain and simple greed and monopoly tactics at work.

 

[Eos]

Also, since they value 50GB of transfer at $10, why don't they have a fully metered option and charge 80% of their customers $10 per month? What they really want to do is put the caps in place and make you pay more to transfer video data that's not purchased from them. Plain and simple greed and monopoly tactics at work.

Oh snap! I didn't consider that at all. A flat fee per monnth of ~$10-15 plus $10 for 50GB would be great.

 

[spidey07]

I don't see the relationship. It costs real resources to produce electricity and clean water. Those metered resources are also expected to have 99.9999% uptime and a physical meter attached at the source so the homeowner can easily monitor their usage.

Data packets on the other hand have a fixed infrastructure cost, which goes towards the maintenance of the network they are passing through. This cost is fixed and it doesn't matter if 250GB or 250TB of data pass through it; the cost is the same.

Also, since they value 50GB of transfer at $10, why don't they have a fully metered option and charge 80% of their customers $10 per month? What they really want to do is put the caps in place and make you pay more to transfer video data that's not purchased from them. Plain and simple greed and monopoly tactics at work.

That's where you're off. It's not a fixed cost as it has to be constantly upgraded with capital to keep up with utilization and demand. .

 

[Golgatha]

That's where you're off. It's not a fixed cost as it has to be constantly upgraded with capital to keep up with utilization and demand. .

Due to more and more customers signing on to broadband, and also to push VOIP and IPTV streams (U-Verse only and $10 per 50GB surcharge for others) to their customers. Cry me a river.

 

[Fritzo]

an hour of netflix alone is around 1gb , your 40gb a month does not compute

No, it's not. I work for a national ISP and see this stuff every day. The crazy compression they use on routers and Akamai proxies cuts streaming movies down to 1/10 to 1/20th it's original size. Also if you get something on network (meaning you don't have to go off of ATT's network to get it), it doesn't count against you.

As I said, I like to use myself as an example. 4 people in my house, two kids that watch Youtube and a wife that's addicted to Netfilx, plus my own habits, and we hardly ever go over 30GB/month. The most I think we ever got was 42GB.

 

[ballmode]

End of the Internet for us all

 

[Engineer]

No, it's not. I work for a national ISP and see this stuff every day. The crazy compression they use on routers and Akamai proxies cuts streaming movies down to 1/10 to 1/20th it's original size. Also if you get something on network (meaning you don't have to go off of ATT's network to get it), it doesn't count against you.

As I said, I like to use myself as an example. 4 people in my house, two kids that watch Youtube and a wife that's addicted to Netfilx, plus my own habits, and we hardly ever go over 30GB/month. The most I think we ever got was 42GB.

We have 4 people but no netflix. Lots of Facebook (wife and kids) and some music/youtube stuff. Right now at 21GB for the month.

I don't think a cap of 250GB would effect me at all but the real question is whether the cap is really to deter those high end users, in which case it would be moved up over time as bandwidth increases for all or if it is a trap just to catch people as they move toward more streaming services and away from regular cable television/video.

 

[Golgatha]

Between game consoles (360, Wii, PS3) updating and downloading content, Skype, Folding@Home, downloading files (game patches, system patches, etc.), Steam purchases and updates for current games, streaming video, online gaming, and regular Internet usage; I'm using 134GB between transmit and receive data this month so far (103GB Received, 31GB Transmitted). I'm over halfway to their cap at only 2/3 the way through this month. I would consider my family of four people's usage normal in this day and age for my demographic (30-40 year olds).

I was thinking about adding Netflix to our household, but these caps give me pause. One thing I know is that I'm not going to get IPTV to stream U-Verse on demand content. I'll just spend more money with Redbox, as it is a much, much cheaper solution for me.

I figure $1 to deliver 4.7-9.5GB (DVD) or $1.50 to deliver 25-50GB (Bluray) of video content to my house is still a better deal than $10 per 50GB. I wonder what Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo think about these caps, as I'm sure they'd like to sell full games over the Internet too.

 

[KMFJD]

Everything i have read in regards to netflix usage states 1 GB per hour for SD, and up to 13 GB per hour for HD

 

[AnyMal]

I am going to let Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, etc. to fight this battle. They have vested interested and resources to do that.

 

[Golgatha]

I am going to let Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, etc. to fight this battle. They have vested interested and resources to do that.

Looks like there is at least a bit of consumer resistance to deal with as well.

http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r25603797-Sign-here-if-you-re-cancelling-because-of-the-UBB-policy-

Also, from what I've read on dslreports, it looks like DSL Extreme (http://www.dslextreme.com) is not going to impose any restrictive caps. My personal problem with them is I can only get their 3M/768k plan where I live. If I could get their 6M plan I would definitely switch. I also refuse to give Time Warner my business, as they don't respect network neutrality in my area (i.e. they throttled my Bittorrent based B.Net download of Starcraft 2 so badly my connection as a whole was unusable for anything).

 

[BoomerD]

Looks like there is at least a bit of consumer resistance to deal with as well.

http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r25603797-Sign-here-if-you-re-cancelling-because-of-the-UBB-policy-

Also, from what I've read on dslreports, it looks like DSL Extreme (http://www.dslextreme.com) is not going to impose any restrictive caps. My personal problem with them is I can only get their 3M/768k plan where I live. If I could get their 6M plan I would definitely switch. I also refuse to give Time Warner my business, as they don't respect network neutrality in my area (i.e. they throttled my Bittorrent based B.Net download of Starcraft 2 so badly my connection as a whole was unusable for anything).

Fuck...I'd hate to go back to 6 Mb DSL. That'd seem almost like dial-up...

 

[Patranus]

The pay more thing makes sense, but many ISP's have a cap, period. You cannot pay for more bandwidth, if you go over you either get throttled to dial up speeds. Or risk getting your service cut off. I know the providers are all about making money so the fact many won't sell you more bandwidth makes absolutely no sense to me.

Um.....
That isn't what happens.

 

[her209]

Doesn't ATT&T state that 2% of their users consume 60% of the bandwidth?

There's got to be a way (with math) to show that the 2% aren't ruining the experience for the other 98%.

I'll repost my earlier scenario which demonstrates as such.

First we start with the assumption that data caps are being put into place to better user experience. But we know that Internet usage throughout the day is not constant, but rather has peak times and lull times. We also know that there are heavy users who use are constantly downloading so they are using their Internet during the peak times and during the lull times. During peak times, you have the average users competing for bandwidth with the heavy users, so every one has an equal share of the available bandwidth. Now if we assume 2% of users are heavy users, then the math is the following:

b = available bandwidth
u = total number of users using the Internet at one time

With heavy downloaders and average users using the Internet at peak times, each user gets:

b / u

If we assume that the heavy downloaders don't use the Internet during the peak times (remember data caps supposedly improve overall user experience), then each user gets:

b / 0.98u

The percentage improvement for the average user if all heavy downloaders stopped using the Internet during peak times:

(b / .98u - b / u) / (b / u)
=(1/.98 - 1)(b/u) / (b/u)
=1/.98 - 1
=.0204
=2.04%

So the average user will see ~2% more available bandwidth if all the heavy downloaders stopped using the Internet during peak times.

 

[Golgatha]

Fuck...I'd hate to go back to 6 Mb DSL. That'd seem almost like dial-up...

I get by nicely on my 12/1 U-Verse connection currently.