Austin Internet Question, RE: TW is capping internet bandwidth in Austin.

[schild]

Which just outrights fuck me as I'd be labeled a dirty, dirty power-user. And by Power user I mean about 20x what their highest cap is going to be.

The only other options that I know of are:
AT&T, which is shit.
Grande Communications, which is total shit.

Does anyone know of any other providers?

Edit: Yes, before anyone makes a wiseass remark. Things can get worse.

Edit 2: For the record, I (the apartment - 3 people) pull down somewhere between oh, 500GB and 1TB a month. Obviously I'm way WAY over the average. But COMEON. Really? No options above 100GB?

[Salamok]

should call TWC and ask about caps on business class (i think it is just under $100), you can get a T for $300 but 1.5 up/down blows these days.  I'm thinkin At&T/SWBell/SBC Global (all the same 6mb DSL) for myself but I am not sure I want to lock into a contract and have them follow suit with the caps.

[ahoythematey]

there is a crippling amount of rage I'm experiencing concerning this right now, so much that I really have no desire to even try to articulate how angry I am

[stray]

I only know those three as well, but I heard that Grande is not so bad. They're sort of local (San Marcos), so maybe you'll get better service out of it. Have you checked Verizon?

[Salamok]

I don't think grande has it's own lines in the ground they just resell SBC, I've spoke with a few grande reps on the business side I wasn't even aware they had a consumer solution.  Right now AT&T seems the most competitive as they are really trying to gain market share (but they are also riding on SBC lines).  I'm thinking of just switching it all to AT&T and calling time warner in a year to see what they will do to win me back, those fuckers don't ever do shit for existing clients.

[schild]

If Verizon was here, I'd switch tomorrow. Their tech support isn't 24 hours though so I have to call them in the morning. Right now I just want to light a fucking spear on fire and start killing every time warner employee I see. None of them are victims, they're all part of the problem. Fucking fuck.

Edit: Also, I just called TW and asked when the caps were coming, the guy and his supervisor had no clue. He asked why, and I told him I have to know when to cancel my service.

[Salamok]

article says they will be monitoring for april (like they don't monitor this stat all the time) and the caps will be in place this summer (my guess is early summer).

edit: not my situation but WTF do you do if you are in the middle of a contract?

[schild]

I'm not even sure we're on a contract. I think we're month to month. I imagine the contract would become nullified if they totally changed the way the entire service operated. Either that or you can fuck them and keep your old service.

[Triforcer]

Just a question, but I use my computer to play games, surf the net, and watch a few TV shows a week on hulu/megavideo etc.  I don't know how much bandwidth that takes.

 Are the people in danger of hitting proposed caps downloading thousands of songs a month and calculating missile trajectories for the DOD, or are the standards low enough to catch the average MMO gamer/young Internet user? 

[angry.bob]

Just a question, but I use my computer to play games, surf the net, and watch a few TV shows a week on hulu/megavideo etc.  I don't know how much bandwidth that takes.

 Are the people in danger of hitting proposed caps downloading thousands of songs a month and calculating missile trajectories for the DOD, or are the standards low enough to catch the average MMO gamer/young Internet user? 

A 100 gig cap is still pretty big, but not that big. And a buck a gig if you go over is fucking brutal. Just surfing and playing games should be fine. "My movies to watch" folder has 16 movies at 720p in it and it's just shy of 99 gigs.  So, anything over aabout 20-24 hours of video would be sort of iffy depending on what else you do. I would be way, way over the limit, probably by the end of the second day of the month.

[Trippy]

Music bandwidth is nothing, it's video that's an issue. You are looking at anywhere from ~350 MB per hour (standard BitTorrent Xvid TV show at 624 x 352) to ~2+ GB per hour (HDTV res H.264 video).

MMORPGs take very little bandwidth. At max (like the entire zone/area population is standing right next to you running around in circles) you are looking at maybe 512 Kbps. Most of the time it's well under 256 Kbps. If you were, say, triple-boxing 8 hours a day, every day, you could potentially hit a bandwidth cap (512 Kbps * 8 hours/day * 30 days = ~50 GB).

Edit: I should've mentioned that in comparison to video, 128 Kbps MP3s are ~1 MB/minute so an hour of music is only ~60 MB.

[Trippy]

Which just outrights fuck me as I'd be labeled a dirty, dirty power-user. And by Power user I mean about 20x what their highest cap is going to be.

The only other options that I know of are:
AT&T, which is shit.
Grande Communications, which is total shit.

Does anyone know of any other providers?

Edit: Yes, before anyone makes a wiseass remark. Things can get worse.

Edit 2: For the record, I (the apartment - 3 people) pull down somewhere between oh, 500GB and 1TB a month. Obviously I'm way WAY over the average. But COMEON. Really? No options above 100GB?

AT&T is pushing U-Verse really aggressively and you might be able to get a no-cap service for a reasonable price. Otherwise like Salamok said you are looking at a "business-class" account (that's probably what I'll end up doing when Comcast tells me I'm exceeding my cap).
 

[pants]

Those of us who live in countries where 20GB/month is a lot say 'Welcome to our world!'.

[Salamok]

What gets me is that Austin is supposed to be tech heaven and TWC's top plan is 50gb.  I'd probably not be nearly as pissed if they had some $60 a month solution for 250gb or $75 a month for unlimited.  Most months I am under 50gb but I doubt I am ever under 10gb and occasionally I load it up and go above 100gb.

On a side note any idea what kind of bandwidth netflix streaming uses?

[Samwise]

On a side note any idea what kind of bandwidth netflix streaming uses?

It's probably going to be pretty similar to downloading a movie of the same size and quality.  So, going off Bob's figures, if you're watching Netflix Instant at 720p, you get 24 hours (assuming you do nothing else with your net connection) before you're cut off.

When I went shopping for internet at the new house I had two questions for prospective ISPs.  The first was "do you have any download caps?"  The second was "do you have any plans to introduce them at any point in the future?"  The one I'm on passed both questions.  Knock on wood.

[Sky]

MMORPGs take very little bandwidth. At max (like the entire zone/area population is standing right next to you running around in circles) you are looking at maybe 512 Kbps. Most of the time it's well under 256 Kbps. If you were, say, triple-boxing 8 hours a day, every day, you could potentially hit a bandwidth cap (512 Kbps * 8 hours/day * 30 days = ~50 GB).

I'd be more worried about big patches, and you can forget about downloading clients. Even so, I could probably skate by and even get an occasional Steam title.

If not, meh. I've got other things to do, and would probably send them a thank you note for saving me money (by cancelling).

[Wasted]

I will never ever get over the lollerificness of a monthly download allowance. Some people were fed some wicked fucking kool-aid somehow and I can't rationalize it.

And on that note, in the last 2 days I have used 40GB.

here is where you damn the future of American internet.

Not that I want to get all schaudenfreude over it, the cheaper the internet is overseas the better hope we had in Australia of things getting better.

[schild]

I will never ever get over the lollerificness of a monthly download allowance. Some people were fed some wicked fucking kool-aid somehow and I can't rationalize it.

And on that note, in the last 2 days I have used 40GB.

here is where you damn the future of American internet.

Not that I want to get all schaudenfreude over it, the cheaper the internet is overseas the better hope we had in Australia of things getting better.

No no, I'll keep switching to whatever doesn't have a bandwidth cap, and then when they finally cap everything, I'll just switch to dialup and say "fuck technology" or get a business class line.

You're still fucked.

[Salamok]

It's insane that this isn't price fixing, TWC is only doing this in markets where they have no competition.  Also in their test bed for implementing caps (Beaumont fucking texas) their only semi competitor, AT&T (at 1/3 the speed), is now implementing bandwidth caps as well (20gb and 150gb).  Then there is the fact that both of these companies are offering subscriber TV services and it is pretty much not only a "we are gonna milk you till your tits fall off" scenario but we are also going to "cockblock you from getting your subscriber TV content from elsewhere".  On top of all that the current no cap plan is already very profitable and it makes me want to join the Luddites.

No wonder they turned down the broadband stimulus money, raping customers is oh so much more profitable and satisfying.

[Merusk]

Yeah it's all about shutting-down Netflix and Hulu, so it makes sense to put a smaller cap on Tech-savvy places like Austin. They're already not using Cable for TV, so get the funds from 'em other ways.

I've been running a bandwith monitor at home for a few months in anticipation of this happening to me. I should check what my useage is to see how screwed I am.

[Bandit]

Ars Technica article on the TWC issue in Texas...."Time Warner rationale for bandwidth caps doesn't add up"
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/04/get-ready-for-metered-broadband-texas.ars

[ahoythematey]

Anybody who has been a customer of TW knows so without even needing numbers.  I've said it to others and I'll say it here: I wouldn't lift a finger to help any and every TW employee were they burning alive.  None of them are worth the amount of money their organs would sell for on the black market were they to be harvested.

[CharlieMopps]

Working for a phone company, I can tell you that capping bandwidth doesn't save us any money. Bandwidth is cheap as hell. Everyone, and I mean everyone, is going to Fiber to the prem as fast as our little trench diggers can get us there. Soon 1TB connections will be standard. We , in fact, have them all over already. It's just a matter of which markets we turn up first. Then you got the Feds giving us money to do even more... DSL/Copper wires cost us so much money in maint a year it's crazy. We install fiber in a market and the device alarms just stop overnight. No matter how much it costs us to install, it pays for itself in a year.

The reason these companies are doing this is to charge you more. plain and simple... they want to get you to pay for the $100/month service AND still nail you for going over. You want to get around their bandwidth cap cheaply? figure out which plan has the best $/GB bundle... get multiple lines + Firewall + load balancing

oh... I just read about it... $55/month for 40gig? WoW! yea, you're screwed.

[schild]

Charlie, do you work for Verizon?

[JWIV]

http://www22.verizon.com/residential/fiosinternet/checkbyaddress/  or dslreports is probably the best bet to check for availability or yammering about the construction schedule.

[Trippy]

I thought Cheddar worked for Verizon.

[Salamok]

Maybe in 5-10 years FIOS will come to the area but I have a feeling I will more likely move into a FIOS area before FIOS moves into my area. 

Instead of creative pricing to make more money one of these providers should get off their ass and actually do something innovative to bring in more $$, they can start by having every subscriber become a node for a wireless mesh network and offer community wide high speed wireless at an additional fee.  Fucktards are capping our consumption when the true money is in figuring out how to get us to use more not less.

[schild]

Yea, I'm fairly certain despite there being green dots on the dslreport fios list that there isn't actually any fios in the area and some morons think AT&T Uverse is FIOS. Blurgh. I'm still fucking angry.

[schild]

http://droptimewarnercable.com/

[schild]

Embarq does not service my area >_<

[Lt.Dan]

Australian ISPs have been capping usage for years.  The good news is that there is still enough alternatives that you can choose your poison if you go over - per 100Mb charge or download speed throttled to 128k.

As to strategy I'd say it goes something like this.
- TW sees househol video on demand and downloading as a huge revenue stream in the future
- Currently they have no way to monetise this since all their household internet service is through fixed cost contracts
- Step 1 - cap usage to create incentive to use TW (see Step 2)
- Step 2 - introduce TW downloads that do not count against cap - hey it's free if you use TW's portal
- Step 3 - monetise through advertising, charging content providers to use their network, pay-per-view, and an internet box to enable content direct to your TV, selling TW portal access to non-TW customers

[fuser]

While in Canada we get the CRTC starting a month long public forum discussion about Internet access

http://isppractices.econsultation.ca/

There's like two or three or choices where I live. Cable 15Mbit/1.5Mbit max for $57/month with no cap (but DPI), or unmetered DSL with 10Mbit/640kbps. After dealing with my Cable provider's issues I switched to a 5Mbit DSL because honestly the 15mbit down rates only applied to things that were cached on their local network. I really don't understand why even offer the high bandwidth service with low caps well except for marketing.

If you do any p2p you will exceed that limit very quickly. I feel your pain man as 40GB/month is insanely low, heck thats like '00 limits when service was picking up steam.

[CharlieMopps]

Charlie, do you work for Verizon?

No, I work for one of the few regional Telcos left.

I'm sure AT&T will devour us soon enough with Congress's help.

Edit: by the way... if you knew someone that worked there... they could probably help you out. Give you some inside info on how they're billing it.

Your bandwidth usage is a pretty arbitrary number. I mean... say you go to www.cnn.com and then I go there like 10 milliseconds later... That page is cached... is it the bandwidth to your house? Or coming from outside the network? So, did that webpage count? And if both of us are downloading the same torrent? I just don't see how they can legitimately charge for bandwidth that's mitigated by proper engineering. Along those same lines, isn't making it profitable for you to use more bandwidth going to just encourage them to design poorer and poorer networks? Efficiency will go out the window.

[MahrinSkel]

They want to kill video-over-internet from anyone that doesn't cut them in on the action.  If they had been able to do it with packet shaping, they would have eventually gone after games, e-commerce, and anything else that makes money, but that would have been opportunism.  Video-on-demand is a direct threat to their primary business (because if an 'iTunes for video', including iTunes Video, grabs up a critical mass of content, why would anyone pay for cable TV?), and they are hoping to strangle it in the crib.  Right now, if you want to watch high-quality video via the net on your HDTV, you need a rather high level of technical skill.  However, AppleTV and other one-box solutions are coming, and if one that is friendly to pirated/free content emerges, they're fucked.

Next step will be offering Silverlight, AppleTV, etc., peering arrangements that don't apply towards the caps.  Games will get squeezed a bit, too, although the overall effect is going to be clamping downloadable clients at the 1G or so level (Steam may be fucked).

--Dave

[schild]

The only thing they're gonna squeeze out of me is this:

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  10MB x 512Kbps ($119.95/mo.)

$60 a person for 10MB down? I highly doubt they'll clamp down on business class lines. Also, 10MB down, jesus. Apparently I can get it here too!