Have You Fought Your ISP Over Bandwidth Limits? 1076
serutan asks: "Recently, a DC++-related mailing list I subscribe to has been buzzing with posts about letters from various ISPs in the U.S., UK, Australia and NZ, warning customers to curtail their download bandwidth usage to an 'acceptable' limit (generally 200 hours/month for three straight months). These are people who thought they signed up for unlimited access. Some of the letters hint that high bandwidth usage may imply illicit activity. All are vague on possible consequences, and nobody has mentioned actually being cut off by an ISP. One guy received an apology after talking to a supervisor about the meaning of the word 'unlimited.' Is this a growing trend? Have you received similar threats from an ISP? What was the outcome?" Of course, would it be so difficult for ISPs to stop advertising "unlimited" access, and instead include in the small (or not-so small) print exactly what the "acceptable" bandwidth usage is? If you did sign up for "unlimited" services and find yourself in this predicament, what have you done to get your bandwidth issues resolved?
Unlimited = ?? (Score:5, Interesting)
cox (Score:5, Interesting)
-always available, no dialing
-no hourly usage limits
-no tying up the phone line
-no content restrictions
looks like only one of these really applies to "unlimited"
Bandwidth limits? (Score:3, Interesting)
Read the TOS (Score:1, Interesting)
Yes, the fine print DOSE matter.
Fortress of Insanity [homeunix.org]
bandwidth (Score:2, Interesting)
Haven't these guys ever heard of videoconferencing or streaming media? There are legitimate uses for high bandwidth.
Cox.net has limits, but not enforced so far... (Score:2, Interesting)
Personally, I regularly consume quite a bit more bandwidth than I am "supposed" to. However, I've yet to hear from Cox regarding my excessive use.
Comcast (Score:5, Interesting)
See, the whole "it's always on" thing doesn't apply. It's NOT unlimitted. We don't know what the limit is. We aren't told. We aren't allowed to know. Customers are not allowed to know what this 'limit' is unless they go over it. Do you know why? Let me tell you why.
Because this limit only applies to those who are in an area where there are a lot of people. If you are on a headend with very few people, you can download to your heart's content, because it just won't affect that many customers. If you try to do the same amount of activity on a node that already has too many users - UH OH! You're being excessive!
So, by not naming a limit, they can impose one as they see fit - not by your actual usage, but by how you work as a unit within your geographic area.
Working for Comcast (though not for much longer) gave me some interesting insights into ISP mentality.
Kicked of of Shaw Cable in Victoria, BC (Score:1, Interesting)
Regardless, we both thought he had unlimited access, but they warned him once, then booted him. No illegal activity here, just the unwritten policies at Shaw (which lost them a customer).
Not on download, but upload (Score:2, Interesting)
Less that 24 hours later I get a phone call from the RoadRunner police, warning me about excessive usage of upstream bandwidth and obviously implying that I'm running some sort of server out of my house and had better stop. I told him why I was uploading data but that fell on deaf ears, and I was basically told that the only reason they were going to let it go this time was because I was paying for an additional IP address anyway. I got the distinct feeling from this rude guy that they wouldn't care if I'd downloaded a hundred gigabytes of data, but that if I used a hair more of their upstream bandwidth than they thought I should be they'd cancel service in a heartbeat.
Cable Company (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:bandwidth (Score:5, Interesting)
Just because they advertise "unlimited" service does not mean that they can refuse us service at any time for any reason.
They want to be as vague as possible (by not setting specific limits) so that they can continue to lower and lower the cap until the only people able to use the service are those that are into checking www.msn.com, www.comcast.net, and their email via Outlook Express to their Comcast mailbox.
It is much more profitable for them to drop the high bandwith users and keep these people that never use their connection.
Comcast states, "if you are using service more than the average". If you are living in a residential area in southern FL you are likely to have a lot of elderly residents checking the status of their pregnant daugther-in-law. If you are in a college town you are likely averaging with the best of the pr0n/warez kids.
YMMV,
I wish they would have done this at dorms (Score:2, Interesting)
After talking to the sys admin, he said they weren't willing to send out warning letters to the worst offenders.. and he even said there was plenty of bandwidth for everyone after the cap if people would just be responsible.
Of course now that I'm out of the dorms and paying for my bandwidth, I expect to be able to use every last bit (pun intended) of it.
It's just a tragedy of the commons.
Unlimited = " top 1%" (Score:1, Interesting)
Bottom line, if you call them on their bluff of unlimited fast internet access, then they cut you off.
They did, however, claim that content wasn't being monitored, though I have no way of verifying this.
ISP-specific DC hubs (Score:2, Interesting)
Rogers Ottawa (Score:2, Interesting)
I have no idea how much they were downloading or from where but it got me wondering about if the source matters.
I routinely download 5+GB/day from the Rogers newsservers and have never had a warning. I usually only stop downloading when I'm refreshing the lists and start up again.
I also do some uploading (approx 2-5 GB per month) to a couple of friends computers who are mostly outside the rogers network.
when I told this to a Bell rep who came to my door he told me to keep Rogers since Bell Hi-Speed would definately limit me. 2GB a month I think was his number.
I've been patiently awaiting my letter from Rogers to stop but it has never arrived. If they added a new tier of totally unlimited for a few more dollars a month I would be willing to join up to pay my fair share but it does not look like thats going to happen any tmie soon.
Either way, I don't know how they are determining who is abusing their systems since I'm sure by any standards I would be on that list. It could just be a scare tactic hoping the few people they contact will spread their experience through word of mouth. Maybe their just hoping this will cause people to slow down without them having to go through too much trouble.
How to fight them... (Score:3, Interesting)
An ideal guinea pig would be someone who downloaded a bunch of ISOs (say for 3 or 4 different linux distributions) and then got hit with one of these letters. However, I don't see that happening. I also don't see people who get hit with these letters mentioning exactly what they were using the bandwidth for. Surely if they're not at fault, they should say what they were doing so that the EFF or other groups could help them fight the cable companies. I'm also betting they care more about outbound traffic than inbound traffic.
Re:guilty until proven innocent? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not saying that everybody who has high download bandwidth usage and low upload usage is innocent; there are a lot of leechers who do just that. However, there's so many file sharers that with my low upload usage I dropped off the list of people my provider was after.
Re:Problems with Speakeasy.net (Score:2, Interesting)
Charter hasn't bitched to me about bandwidth use... yet. I downloaded a few gigs of stuff just last night.
Re:guilty until proven innocent? (Score:5, Interesting)
Your kidding right? Haha, you must be. Let me explain how it really works out there.
For those of you lucky enough to have freedom of ISPs you better be thanking your lucky fucking stars. There are people (like me) that have had multiple types of Internet over the years (dialup, 640/160 DSL, 768/128 DSL, 3000/384 Cable, 1500/128 Cable, 1500/256 Cable, 1800/256 Cable and soon to be 3000/256 Cable). I have had a handful of providers and a wide range of acceptable connections, speed, and tech support.
I currently live in a suburb of Minneapolis. We have two choices currently (where I live)... Comcast cable (which raised the rates on those that don't want their CATV to over $50 if you have your own modem) and Wireless (which has a $500 setup fee and slow speeds (640/640 IIRC)).
Comcast comes in and takes over an area, raises prices because there are no other options for HSD, and then sets these invisible caps...
Do you really fucking think that Comcast gives a flying rats ass if I go over my invisible limit and they dump me (mind you, they refuse to tell you what the cap is, how they determine it, how you should determine it, how you should protect yourself from it, etc)? They don't for one simple reason... MORE MONEY. If I go over that limit I am hogging bandwith money from others that only check email and a few webpages a day...
With 25 million subscribers, moving to a 3mbit speed cap, and needing more money, they are doing exactly the best thing to save their bandwith costs, dumping those users that use the service the way it should be.
Sadly we have no recourse. 90% of their users aren't going to start pegging their bandwith usage and they are going to keep dropping off the high-end users until they are satisfied they are raking in enough dough.
Sad but true... Just my worthless
Re:Comcast (Score:3, Interesting)
Of course you won't be profitable, if you're buying your bandwidth 1.5mbit at a time you're going to get charged an assload. Now try buying 3gbits(about what they have in austin.rr.com) and compare the price per mbit. Yeah. Its a lot easier this way.
If they don't want us using it, tell us BEFORE we exceed it. Not that I've ever had a problem with roadrunner, the fact that its owned by the same people that might one day be streaming video (as AOL is wanting to do now) means they understand that people not only demand bandwidth, but deserve it.
Re:Problems with Speakeasy.net (Score:5, Interesting)
Its probably to get you hooked on the high speed so you're more willing to pay for the higher bandwidth when they knock you down again to your paid rate.
There's always a cap.. (Score:4, Interesting)
In the case of FUP what it boils down to is that they don't really care whether you go over a certain threshold, but rather, how much bandwidth there is available in your area. In DSL bandwidth is shared among all the subscribers to one telephone "switch" (CO). For residential use, they typically oversubscribe this to the tune of 1:25 - so a "T1" for every 25 people on a 1024Mbps DSL line.
If they find out that one CO is using vastly more bandwidth than planned, and there aren't that many new (and elderly) users lined up to get connected - so they can't afford to just lay down more fiber, they reserve the right to crack down on people who use more bandwidth than average. Of course they don't want to be dicks about this, so they usually target people using more than ten times the average, or the 10% "top talkers". Going after top talkers first makes a lot of sense, since the number 1 top talker probably uses half of the bandwidth of the entire neigborhood
The actual reason that most plans do NOT come with a cap is that cracking down on top talkers takes a lot of effort. Ever metering the bandwidth can take a lot money and equipment. In one of the earliest incarnations of ADSL service you could check the traffic you used online - they removed this, because all the overhead slowed down connections to the point it was costing them more in terms of bandwidth than just ignoring overages.
In fact, some of the budget plans that pretend to have a cap don't have one. It's a "special offer" for "6 months only", but in reality they don't have the infrastructure and the people to meter all bandwidth all the time and to go after people with nastygrams...
Of course, if your connection really is uncapped in the administrative sense, that doesn't mean they won't bandwidth-limit on your ass without you even knowing...
The most elegant scheme I've seen sofar is used by Bredbandbolaget (IIRC), who sell 10Mbps fiber internet access; if you go over your cap, which is specifically stated to be X GB per month, your speed simply drops to 128Kbps for the rest of the month.. Still usuable for the bare necessities (web, chat, e-mail and some windows updates), just no downloading movies until the next month/billing cycle starts. AND it's fully automated which makes it a lot cheaper than nastygrams. Winners all around.
Re:Bandwidth throttling and traffic shaping is bes (Score:3, Interesting)
Without P2P apps, there'd be a heck of a lot less demand for broadband from teenagers and 20-somethings. Maybe the parents in the burbs just want "always-on" so they can check their email without dial up and send pictures to relatives, but let's be real, that's not driving the broadband industry.
Re:Unlimited = ?? (Score:2, Interesting)
It's Five GB down, One GB up according to this page. [mytelus.com]
It's not really actively enforced. I've downloaded 10 gigs, uploaded 5 gigs in one month, and was not contacted. I suspect it there's for the heaviest abusers, the ones saturating their line 24/7 with FTP servers.
Should be a law (Score:4, Interesting)
One word...Direcway. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Bandwidth limits? (Score:5, Interesting)
That is why uploads with a cable modem aremore limited than downloads.
Re:Unlimited = ?? (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, it is.
You see, when "Grandma Smith" realizes that AOL is a crappy service, she will call her nephew, a.k.a. "Mr. Bandwidth Hog", and ask him who the best ISP to use is. He will reccomend the ISP which treats him best, and she will pass that reccomendation on to her entire bridge club.
A mom & pop that loses the geek mindshare goes out of business in under a year. Every time.
Cost Analysis (Score:3, Interesting)
Among other job duties, I am the company's cost analyst. I studied the heavy usage issue. The results would surprise only a fool.
What drives the cost of a dialin? Well, its usage during the daily peak time, of course. As an ISP, you generally pay based on the 95% peak consumption of bandwidth plus you have to have incoming lines and backhaul lines sufficient to handle the daily peak.
This means that any account which is online at every daily peak consumes the same cost of resources as an account which is on 24 hours a day.
So, do the monthly hour consumption and the daily peak usage correlate? They do. Starting somewhere between 180 and 240 hours, 95% of the accounts are online at more than 95% of the weekday peaks (our weekend peaks are lower, and thus excluded from the equation).
That means that for all practical purposes we have to have an entire network port and bandwidth just for that one customer.
Now, how much does your home phone line cost? And your dialup internet account? The dialup is less, right? Well, guess what: all told your ISP is paying more like what your home phone line costs to deliver that account. They're in business to make money, not lose it.
Re:guilty until proven innocent? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Unlimited = ?? (Score:5, Interesting)
I remember when it first came out. It was silly. Ziplink (one of my first real ISPs) offered me unlimited. Then a few months later called me and said that I was averaging 8 hours a day online and thats well above normal usage blah blah policy of excessive usage blah blah keep it up and we will bump you to a buisness account
Needless to say I dropped them like a hot potato. I mean if you say unlimited, thats unlimited. YOu can't redefine "unlimited" (tho your definition is completely reasonable... in fact theres no reason you would need ot allow simultaneous connections like that at all).
Of course when everyone was on dialup alot of ISPs got killed by unlimited plans. As im sure you know (maybe others don't) the problem was the rule of thumb was around 7 accounts per modem or so. So if one person stayed on for 24 hours straight, they tied up a phone line and modem for the entire24 hours and completely throw off your numbers.... in fact it ends up costing more in equipment and telephone fees to keep that user than you make from them.
Basically the entire service made money in the float, the ability to overbook services yet still be available just because everyone wasn't using it at the same time. A few "power users" could really fuck the whole thing up.
But thats the problem with unlimited access... for many it just turne dout to not be profitable. Was it moving power users to broadband that saved the unlimited dialup? I figured it would have gone the way of the dodo by now.
-Steve
Re:guilty until proven innocent? (Score:5, Interesting)
This ensures that one person does not destroy the bandwidth of another. It is a hell of a lot better then making users worry about how much they download.
One such implementation is the Weighted Round Robin qdisc in Linux:
http://wipl-wrr.dkik.dk/wrr/
There are other implementations that scale better.
I say this every time someone brings up the "scarce bandwidth" issue, but no one ever listens and ISP continue to use draconian way to solve their bandwidth issues that could *easily* be solved with a little algorithm.
Sprint Broadband/Earthlink threat (Score:1, Interesting)
I then went and read the terms of service and there was no mention of bandwidth limits or accetable usage so I fired off an angry email to them asking them to point out the section in their service agreement that stated anything about upstream usage limits and the their right to revoke an account that is using too much upstream bandwidth. They didn't reply to my email and I haven't recent any emails since.
Re:Just a little plug... (Score:2, Interesting)
I can't help but to feel sorry for you americans. I live in Stockholm, Sweden. For around US 55$ (400 SEK) a month I get 8Mb/s down and 1Mb/s up with absolutely NO BANDWIDTH RESTRICTIONS. And this isn't even a very good deal, many of my friends get 10Mb/s (both ways) for aproximately US 40$ (300 SEK).
Re:Problems with Speakeasy.net (Score:3, Interesting)
My Comcast service in Northern VA was recently uncapped or changed to roughly 3mbit down (upload stayed at 256kbit). I don't normally wear the tinfoil hat but I see one of two things driving this.
Tiered pricing/byte limites are on the horizon or we are experiencing the benefits of competition between broadband providers. Maybe a little of both. Seems odd for a broadband provider and more so for a cable company to give something for nothing.
Most ISP are not profitable (Score:2, Interesting)
So that makes it so you have to look at every customer. Aunt Marge uses her DSL for email and shopping, taking up a few GB/month. That results in a net profit of a few dollars. This does not make up for the users who are using several GB/day. Accounting for bandwidth charges (yes ISPs pay them, no unlimited, or unmetered bandwidth for them) this customer COSTS them money. Nothing to do with what they are doing with the bandwidth, that is none of their concern, pr0n, movies, whatever. The bottom line says this customer COSTS several dollars per month to provide them service. Since these folks represent ~1% of customers, they lose service. The reason its in the TOS, is because they are much less likely to cut off a $200/month line vs. a $49.95/month line for similar usage patterns.
But screw that, we all want our unlimited bandwidth for $50/month. Ok, fine, lets make it so. All the independant ISP will fail, leaving only the ILECs left, which, with no more competition, cut all their support staff and raise prices. We have now won the battle.
Re:One word...Direcway. (Score:2, Interesting)
So, the provider weighs the cost of losing and re-acquiring a few subscribers (most of whom have NO POTS alternative other than satellite because they live in the boonies) vs. what it costs to jack up the available bandwidth to meet their needs.
If there's a satellite systems networking guy out there, please correct/supplement my figures. I no longer have the lab books in which I worked out the math.
-----
Re:inside perspective (Score:4, Interesting)
The product was BT Anytime, clearly advertised as 24 hours a day internet access.
To keep within the law, the TOS had to change before pulling any dirty tricks. First they went for the reasonable 16 hours a day, then 12, then 150 a month.
The switch to a new number for heavy users was heavily featured in the BBC consumer rights program "Watchdog", because offering a secretly crippled service for some customers breaks British trading standards rules.
It was a shameful underhand way of dealing with customers BT didn't want anymore, and guaranteed that thousands who slowly migrated to ADSL would never consider BT when deciding on a broadband ISP.
I object to the description of the housebound who were left without net connections while BT screwed with the dial up numbers, as being "selfish idle connection loving kindred". The main reason for choosing the expensive Anytime package rather than the far cheaper 6pm-8am service was for heavy use. BT knew, or should have known that, and should have had TOS and advertising that dealt with "problem" users in the first place.
As for the "idle connection" claim, it's quite easy to appear idle if you are blind and your screen reader takes 10 minutes to read a page, or you're sitting chatting occasionally on ICQ.
BT never allowed you to connect for more than 2 hours - disconnecting remotely after 1 hour 59 minutes.They clearly barred the use of auto reconnection in the TOS, so they could easily have banned those that were online all day and were reconnecting every 2 hours within 5 seconds, but instead they behaved like idiots playing silly beggars with the phone numbers, upset and angered thousands, and were featured heavily on prime time TV as a big bad nasty mean company. A total PR disaster.
I'm glad you're so proud of what they did, I figured someone on an island of 60 million had to be on their side...
Re:Problems with Speakeasy.net (Score:3, Interesting)
ISP has specific limits (3 GB/week) and I use it (Score:4, Interesting)
Their policy is simple -- You can use up to the bandwith your account type allows. [xmission.com] The basic $19/month package has 3 GB/week, add 1 GB/week (4 GB/month) for $10. They give static IP address and no arbitrary server restrictions.
In their newsgroup discussions, they explain that because there are so many people who pay for big chunks of bandwidth and don't use it, they can provide the whole enchalada without problems. If more people started using all their bandwidth, then they'd have to lower the limits, but with all the homes and businesses and colo connections that consume only a tiny bit of the bandwidth they pay for, they don't anticipate it as a problem. Their stats [xmission.com] show an aggregate of about 3 empty 45Mb/DS3 lines even at the peak use.
xmission is great.
Around here... (Score:2, Interesting)
they never say anything about unlimited bandwidth..
and luckily 99% of the population just see the word unlimited and block out the access bit..
Your ISP at Work (Score:5, Interesting)
Your standard ISP pays not for bandwidth, but for pipe density. T1, T3, DS3, OC3, etc. They pay for 1.5Mbps up/down 24-7 if they need it. NOw, obviously, this costs them much more a month than your 1.5Mbps download connection, by an order of magnitude of 20 or so. If you're on a dial-up service, most ISPs don't pay much to maintain infrastructure, unless they are also the phone company. It's some servers, a few banks of digi-cards, and a local dial-in number. In the case of high speed access, they generally also have to pay to maintain lines and equipment along the lines, such as repeaters and routers. A few web servers, a couple of mail servers, and you're an ISP.
Now, here's where the issue comes in. Normally, an ISP expects that some people will use high-speed very sparingly, probably depending on it for a few small critical tasks and the rest is email. And then they know there will be a few gamers and downloader making up some slack. This is expected by your broadband ISPs.
The problem comes in when you have someone who demands to use their connection for 1.5Mbps, all day, every day. The same connection, bursting, might serve six or 7 heavy usage customers, or 40 light usage customers, but now you have one single customer, attempting to consume $500 worth of download bandwidth for $50.
Obviously, there should be some sort of common sense applied here. Capping the top speed lower would be a poor idea, because those who download the occasional large file or movie trailer or whatnot enjoy access to the full speed. Changing the access hours seems silly, since some people play games for hours a day but never come close to consuming full bandwidth. Does it seem right to penalize this MAJORITY of the customers because a very small percentage of customers who seem to be of the opinion that if you have a 1.5Mbps connection, you MUST use all of it. If you gave them more bandwidth, they would simply find something else to do with it, not content unless they are pushing their connection as hard as possible, obviously lacking any idea of the economics behind it all.
Some have said that hard limits should be imposed in the contratct. This makes me sad, because it means that you are telling the company that they cannot trust their users, that they cannot use reasonable judgement, or expect that from you. Sometimes, you might have customers who never go over the limit, but might have a school project one month that pushes their usage up high once. As an ISP, I'd prefer to be able to use my discretion in this situation rather than hear the "told you so" of users crying about "lax enforcement of rule".
DISCLAIMER: I work for a mid-sized ISP.
Comcast "unlimited" (Score:4, Interesting)
One guy thinks maybe buried in the Comcast legalese it says "unlimited access" means access at any time, but not for an unlimited length of time.
I've never received any complaints myself, but as an avid DC++ [sourceforge.net] user I am waiting for it to happen and wondering what the highest odds outcome is if I ignore the warning.
Re:Read the fine print (Score:2, Interesting)
http://www.comcast.net/terms/use.jsp Prohibited Uses and Activities
(viii) restrict, inhibit, interfere with, or otherwise disrupt or cause a performance degradation, regardless of intent, purpose or knowledge, to the Service or any Comcast (or Comcast supplier) host, server, backbone network, node or service, or otherwise cause a performance degradation to any Comcast (or Comcast supplier) facilities used to deliver the Service;
Since this rule is to prevent a degradation of service, and the service I'm paying for includes unlimited access, I don't see how they can claim that unlimited access is disrupting the service.
My Father and Verizon (Score:2, Interesting)
Piracy is one of the major sources driving the high speed access. I know lots of people who won't move to cable or dsl precisely because they can do everything on the web or email that they want to do with dialup.
Re:The most common tact (Score:4, Interesting)
The interesting thing about servers is that if you're not running one, you're probably not a real part of the internet. People without server status are just consuming information, and not really contributing to it.
There are ways to participate in the internet without a server (by email, sourceforge accounts, slashdot accounts, yahoo accounts, wikipedia accounts, etc) but the internet always grew up a peer-to-peer thing. I visit your website and you visit mine. When you read something interesting, chances are it was written by an individual, rather than by a company.
We're starting to see more push for the idea that the internet is just one big television show, where you upload your credit card number, download "content", and go shopping. And the ISP accounts with crappy upload figures, bans on servers, dynamic IP addresses, and bandwith limits, port blocking, and all the rest only encourage this.
What does a vagrant contribute to a city? What does a port-blocked upload-limited dynamic IP address contribute to the internet?
Unlimited != Unlimited (Score:5, Interesting)
Guess what happened next... Salad bar sales dropped by about 2/3rds and then he got his ass chewed about the drop in sales. The main thing companies seem to want is for people to pay for 'unlimited' services/food/etc... and then not use them. Unlimited makes for good marketing strategy because the marketers don't have to deal with the realities of a greedy consumer.
I ran into this with my first ISP in 1995. Each account had a shell account and ftp space with that shell account. I would download large files from non-resumable ftp servers *cough*microsoft*cough* of the day into the ftp space and then download them locally. One day I found the file I had transferring was no longer in my ftp space and an email about my 'suspicious' activity. I called and finally got hold of the person that sent the email, their security/compliance officer.
I'm stunned by this and he starts grilling me about what I was downloading that was 50megs. I inform him that it was the linux trial version of Wordperfect and could he please restore the file so downloading could resume. He declines and says that I'm using too much space. I asked just how much space is allowed. I was told that they had no set limit, but that I was using too much. The closest thing he would give to an answer was that the number would float according to overall usage. When he still refused to give any number, I asked why they even had the ftp space and he said it was one of the services they provided.
Their policy was that I could use ftp space, but not too much or too often, with no amount or time given. I asked him how much sense that made to him and he wouldn't answer except to say that was their policy.
I was so pissed that the next week I signed up for AOL just to dump the bastards.
Re:Problems with Speakeasy.net (Score:2, Interesting)
I inquired if certain clauses in the service agreement, which were nil and void, were in there for a specific reason, other than to amuse those with the legal savvy of an average 1st year law student. He reminded me that I was free to not use their service, so I reminded him that he, or rather his company, was bound by the contract he had signed.
He then, in the most threatening tone of voice he could conjure, asked if I wanted to talk to his company's legal department about it. To that I replied, "Sure". He then connected me to the head of their legal department who turned out to be the guy's boss and after about five minutes he and I agreed the the guy was an absolute idiot. [This was no personal low-bandwidth account but a rather expensive, WAN setup though.]
Never heard from the guy again, ever. His boss and I have lunch every once in a while though. Moral of the story: 'unlimited' doesn't always mean 'unlimited' but it generally does.
Re:Problems with Speakeasy.net (Score:1, Interesting)
Unlimited = Without limit.
If you limit bandwidth, you've limited the service, EVEN if you provide unimited time.
So, Unlimited service = unlimited time and unlimited access.
Unlimited service != unlimited time and limited access.
Of course this is all within reason, I don't expect a OC12 worth of bandwidth to come down my cable line. Besides, it's impossible to have unlimited bandwidth.
Bad experience w/ Net4u (Score:2, Interesting)
I live in NZ and have had serious problems with my ISP after signing up for an unlimited 128Kbps connection. All was great for some weeks until one day I wake up and there's no connection. I spend 3 days trying to get through to my ISP through various voice mail boxes and automated responses, and when I finally do, the admin tells me in a pretty gruff way: We booted you because you used too much bandwidth.
Now, that's quite possible - my flatmate did have a penchant for downloading movies, but still, when we signed up, it was all you could eat, er, download in 128k.
I told him this, and he replied it was a new policy and that they weren't interested in our custom any more. Fine, I said, and hung up.
As an addendum to this story, I got a call a few weeks ago from this ISP [net4u.co.nz] telling me I owed them nearly $300 in fees.
Shall we say I suspect they're not likely to ever call me again.
I call Bullshit! (Score:2, Interesting)
Chances are no matter what extent of web surfing you are doing, you're not bringing down more than 15gig per month.
If you are using an excessive amount of bandwidth, stop bitching about it, contact the ISP and ask them (act like a man and actually confront your accuser) what are the acceptable limits, and how is it that I am breaking them.
For all of those people that have complained about downloading Linux ISOs for 'install fests', come on and be honest. Assuming that you even downloaded two recent distro's you're only talking about 7gigs, not counting SRC cds or extras. My suggestion, contact your ISP and encourage them to host local mirrors of the popular distros, including Xfree, kernel.org, and redhat/suse/debian/. Suggest that they can limit the external hog of the bulk of Linux CD downloads, not only that, but because its kept locally, you are going to get better speads from your ISP directly. I typically get 340-360KB/s which is quite sufficent, but get less than 60KB/s from Suse directly.
This is just a few thoughts from someone rambling at work...
g'night
you just don't get it, aren't you? (Score:1, Interesting)
a) its 768kbit download and 128kbit upload. The smaller number is always the upload, always has been on all end user internet connections since the 56k modem. This is called regular/usual/normal terms of trade. And common sense of course.
b) it is a DSL-connection. That means, you have exclusive bandwidth that you don't need to share with your neighbourhood. You have 768kbit down and 128kbit up as long as the DSL head end is not maxxed out, which happens rather seldom compared to alternative methods like a cable access. Technical specifications combined with usual terms of trade and common sense again.
c) everything else is unlimited. Max. bandwidth is limited as noted before, so the rest of the parameters are not limited. Remaining parameters are: connection time, transfer volume up/down, access to ports, access to ip adresses. Common sense again, you know.
So all in all combined, you have an internet access, that lets you up and download all data from/to all servers via all TCP/UDP ports 24h a day, 7 days a week as long as the contract goes, the only constraint being 768kbit down and 128kbit up. Congestion is supposed to happen seldom, if it happens often they may need to provide more backbone bandwidth.
If I market my grocery store with "apples for 20$, unlimited", I should pretty much hope no one shows up with UN cargo plane.
Re:guilty until proven innocent? (Score:2, Interesting)
What I want to know is why Cable and DSL are always set up [so asymmetrically] ... Alternatively, I'd love to partner with an ISP.
You answered your own question.
Re:Read the fine print (Score:3, Interesting)
And YET, you choose to redefine the word "Access" to mean "bandwidth", even though they are two different words.
It's an incidental side effect of what they advertised, not a redefinition of the term. If I hit a bandwidth limit and get kicked off till the end of the month, that interferes with my "unlimited access", does it not?
Maybe that's not the intent, but when they say unlimited access, that says to me "you can access it as much as you want 24/7". Now, if, for example, they could chop the transfer rate way down on my abusive account, that would be mean, but as long as they didn't bump me, I certainly couldn't argue that they were interfering with "unlimited access". I could whine about my new 28.8k modem connection, but I don't think I'd get a whole lot of sympathy when people realized I was downloading the first two LOTR movies, a Windows XP .iso, and 500 mp3s at the time.
(BTW: I'm on dial-up... wheeee.)
Re:From a small ISP's point of view (Score:2, Interesting)
Case in point with dialup. In 1995 we could advertise unlimited dialup with no fear that people would actually use their connections more than about 15-30 minutes a day, on average. Some ISP's had a customer/modem ratio of 200:1. The business model allowed us to legitimately say unlimited with no risk of getting burnt. But today, people often do use their connections for 8+ hours and a customer/modem ratio of 10:1 may not be sufficient. Therefore, ISP's either A)lie, B)go slowly bankrupt, C)piss people off by changing policy after the sale.
Note that I'm just trying to explain a small ISP's point of view. I'm not saying it's fully defensible from an idealistic standpoint. If you want me to agree you are "right", I'll agree if that makes you happy.
Re:From a small ISP's point of view (Score:2, Interesting)
You're right, consumers don't demand to be lied to. They simply flock to the biggest, boldest headers that promise them the most for the least without thinking about how that's possible, and then moan when they later realize there was fine print they didn't bother to read. Consumers want the deal, they always want the deal. They bitch in coffee shops about jobs moving to foreign countries but would flip if you raised the price of Commodity X even $1.00 to keep those jobs in America.
Because people don't realize that what they pay for is part of what they are. It's not just a consumable good, it's a part of your culture. They pretend that Jim the Person is not the same as Jim the Shopper. Jim the Person cares about the plight of 3rd world sweatshop workers. Jim the Shopper busts a nut over those new Nike Cross-Flex Magic Air Jordan Smart Bow Hot Trainers that make him feel so fly on his company basketball courts. You make that choice everytime you demand bigger, better, faster, and more for LESS, LESS, LESS, without thinking of the social complexities behind a purchase.