YOUR INTERNET ACTIVITY: will it be costing you a whole lot more?

[ProgrezivIndie]

Surely you have heard, by now, that ISPs (Internet Service Providers) are looking to CASH IN on heavy users? It's true, and different ISPs (broadband providers) are taking different approaches... some of which could become VERY COSTLY to customers who stay with them, once the PRICE SPIKES begin. There are two sides to this coin: (1) the pipelines over which Internet data flows are becoming more congested, and improvements to those pipelines will not come cheaply. (2) users' activities require much more bandwidth... because of things which consume GigaBytes worth of bandwidth, to upload & download (such as P2P file sharing; Online Multi-player Games; Streaming Radio & TV programming; Movies, Photos, Email, and subscriptions to VOIP & IPTV services).

Addressing these issues, I've put together a modest web page which you might want to visit? If so, click the following link:

http://services-a2z.biz/karlsgoodies/bandwidth-consumption.htm

[Keno76]

1. Wow

this would be BS if it happened

[ProgrezivIndie]

2. "this would be BS if it happened" -- sad to say... it is very likely to happen

here's an excerpt, from a recent:

<...snip...>

Time Warner Cable offers four cap levels of 5, 10, 20, and 40 GB. A download of a high-definition movie typically eats up about 8 GB. A recent report from Sanford C. Bernstein suggests that a family on the 40 GB plan that streams 7.25 hours of online video a week (a fraction of the 60 hours Americans spend watching TV in a week) could end up spending $200 per month on broadband usage fees. And that's just for video viewing, before factoring in such Internet activities as music downloads and photo sharing.

<...snip...>

source: http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/mar2009/tc20090331_726397.htm

I personally have the LOWEST LEVEL broadband plan, from COX Communications... the MONTHLY limits on that plan are 4GB down / 1GB up and that "VALUE PLAN" costs $30/month!

For those who have no idea HOW MUCH bandwidth they consume... there's a *FREE* utility which will monitor your usage (and provide you with detailed reports) linked from the web page (which I referenced earlier) ... http://services-a2z.biz/karlsgoodies/bandwidth-consumption.htm

[bigwillq]

4. Hello.

Welcome to DU! :hi:

[ProgrezivIndie]

5. Thanks for the DU welcome! n/t

[Jack Sprat]

3. You almost knew it was bound to happen.

Once the internet providers got enough people dependant and hooked, they would begin the price-gouging. There is only one thing that I wish they would charge for and that's the multi-addressee, rightwing chainmail. There are so many of those that they have to be straining email capacities.

[ProgrezivIndie]

6. yes, I agree, it was bound to happen ... and as to those JUNK/SPAM emails:

I use Mailwasher PRO ( http://www.firetrust.com/products/mailwasher-pro ) to "scrub" all of my POP/IMAP email accounts. It's set to DELETE UNOPENED & UNREAD anything which I have configured to be treated that way. IOW: this sort of CRUD never reaches my hard drive.

"Mailwasher" checks all of my email accounts (including those provided by my ISP, those associated with my DOMAIN, and those which I've setup at GMAIL)... cleaning them up BEFORE I download the "wanted email" to Thunderbird (my email client).

The FREEWARE version of Mailwasher ( http://www.mailwasher.net ) can only be setup to check ONE email account, but the PRO version can handle as many email accounts as you choose to configure within its account settings.

[ProgrezivIndie]

7. AT&T's "UltraLink"

AT&T Broadband is offering a faster and pricier level of cable Internet access, dubbed UltraLink.

The service, which was launched Thursday in cities including Dallas, Denver, Salt Lake City, the San Francisco Bay Area and Seattle, is the latest in the cable industry's efforts to move to tiered pricing. Markets including Atlanta, Pittsburgh and Portland, Ore., will get UltraLink later this summer, and other regions such as the Northeast will get it later this year.

UltraLink provides Internet access with a downstream of 3 megabits per second and an upstream of 384 kilobits per second for $79.99 per month. The service costs $82.99 per month for customers who lease a modem from the company. Other cable companies offer tiered services with pricing ranging from $29.95 to about $75.

<...snip...>

source: http://news.cnet.com/2100-1033-947559.html

[ProgrezivIndie]

8. "Why Tiered Broadband Is the Enemy of Innovation"

It should come as no surprise: Incumbents are beginning to act like incumbents. But while the cable companies are the first ones to jump on the tiered broadband bandwagon, they won’t be the last. Their argument for limiting bandwidth and data transfers based on price sounds like a good idea, especially as a way to get bargain hunters to buy. In the long run, however, tiered broadband is a terrible idea that will bring the innovation inspired by flat-rate broadband to a screeching halt.

Flat-rate broadband – however cheap or expensive (depending on your point of view) it might be – inspired the formation of Skype, YouTube, Facebook, Apple’s iTunes and MySpace, amongst others. It allowed us to freely experiment, to embrace both the applications and the ideas they represented, such as VoIP, online video, digital downloads and social networking.

<...snip...>

source: http://gigaom.com/2008/06/04/why-tiered-broadband-is-the-enemy-of-innovation/

[ProgrezivIndie]

9. let the PRICING WARS begin...

Frontier Delays Tiered Broadband to Catch TWC’s Customers

Frontier Communications told me today that it will delay launching consumption-based broadband plans until at least 2010 due to the “current economic environment.” “We know everyone is looking at value and trying to stabilize their current budgets, so we felt it would be best to hold off and evaluate those plans in 2010,” said Stephanie Beasly, a spokesperson for the regional telecommunications company.

The economy may have played a role, but the fact that Frontier has seen an increase in the number of customers signing up in its Rochester, N.Y., market after rival Time Warner Cable last week named the city as a trial market for its own tiered broadband plans, also likely played a role, notes StoptheCap.com, which broke the story about Frontier’s delay. In February, Beasly told me the ISP would introduce its caps in August. Not much has changed since then, except for the outrage over the TWC caps. This goes to show how important competition is when it comes to getting ISPs to behave in a consumer-friendly manner.

<...snip...>

source: http://gigaom.com/2009/04/06/frontier-delays-tiered-broadband-to-catch-twcs-customers/

[ProgrezivIndie]

13. can "posturing" legislators be far behind (the pricing wars)?

08 April 2009
N.Y. Representative Attacks Time Warner Broadband Capping

A New York Congressman is taking aim at Time Warner Cable over the company’s possible plan to offer different usage-based pricing plans for its broadband subscribers, and charging customers who go over their download allotment.

<...snip...>

source: http://www.homemediamagazine.com/downloads/ny-representative-attacks-time-warner-broadband-capping-15296

[Earth_First]

10. What about folks with disabilities who rely on broadband to communicate?

How is this fair?

[NashVegas]

11. Not a Very Popular Sentiment Here, But

If you drive a Hummer, you're going to have a higher gas bill than if you drive a Neon. That's just a fact.

Internet users were hooked in with cheap bandwidth just like a drug dealer offers a few freebies.

[Juche]

12. This is dumb

We are in the midst of a revolution with broadband replacing phones, TV, newspapers and various other functions.

FTR, countries in Asia and some in Europe have 50Mbps broadband or higher. If we had spent more money on infrastructure and less on supply side tax cuts or war we wouldn't be having this discussion.

[walldude]

14. Don't sweat it... yeah the big corps and the government

have their heads up their asses as usual but the guys who built the internet, the real guys, have something in the works that will make all this debate obsolete. While the government is worried about control and business is worried about profits, these guys are in it for the technology and the advancement of the science. When they are done broadband will only be limited by the power of the machines on either end.