Bandwidth caps are rate hikes
Internet Service Providers in the USA are trying to apply bandwidth caps to their users, with those caps being 2, 4, or 5 gigabytes-per-month for wireless users at various price levels and generally 250 gigabytes-per-month for home users. Most of the press coverage of this issue comes down on the side of consumers but lately the ISP publicity machine has been revved-up and we’re being told that bandwidth caps are necessary, even inevitable. This is, as my 87 year-old Mom would say, BS.
Provisioning is what ISPs call the amount of Internet backbone capacity they buy per subscriber. This number is always less than the amount of bandwidth we think we are buying because most of the time Internet connections aren’t used at all and ISPs count on this to keep costs under control. If you are buying an 8 megabit-per-second connection from your ISP, he in turn provisions you with around 50 kilobits-per-second of backbone. This data arbitrage is part of what makes being a broadband ISP so profitable.
The reason this is an issue, we’re told, is because ISPs fear we are changing our consumption patterns. If we all switch to getting our television and movies over the Internet then there’s no way 50 kilobits will be enough.
So they’ve taken to publishing charts like the one above, which came from a blog here. It shows the massive increase in data consumption at an arbitrary ISP. Arcing into the heavens it looks like ISP costs are exploding and will shortly become infinite unless data caps are applied. If the ISPs can’t make money, we’re told, then we’ll all lose our Internet service.
They’ve become “too big to fail. ”
Remember that one?
Fortunately, at the same time bandwidth consumption is going up, backbone costs are going down and have been doing so for many years. The basic unit of ISP backbone expenditures is called IP Transit. Here’s a chart I found showing IP Transit prices per megabit in several cities over a period of years.
There are a couple interesting points I can make about this chart. You’ll notice for example that backbone costs in Tokyo, where broadband connections typically run at 100 megabits-per-second, are about four times higher than they are in New York or London. Yet broadband connections in Tokyo cost half what they do in New York, and that’s for a connection at least four times a fast!
So Softbank BB in Tokyo pays four times as much per megabit for backbone capacity and offers four times the speed for half the price of Verizon in New York. Yet Softbank BB is profitable.
No matter what your ISP says, their backbone costs are inconsequential and to argue otherwise is probably a lie.
Now let’s try an apples-to-apples comparison of these two charts by adjusting them to cover the same time period like this:
Consumption went up and prices went down. In terms of backbone cost per subscriber, ISP costs have been flat for years.
That 250 gigabytes-per-month works out to about one megabit-per-second, which costs $8 in New York. So your American ISP, who has been spending $0.40 per month to buy the bandwidth they’ve been selling to you for $30, wants to cap their maximum backbone cost per-subscriber at $8.
That doesn’t sound unreasonable on the face of it. Capping consumption at 20-times the provisioning level doesn’t sound so bad, but I think it sets a dangerous precedent.
These data caps are actually a trap being set for us by the ISPs.
Data caps that may make logical sense today make no sense tomorrow, yet once they are in place they’ll tend to stay in place.
IP Transit costs will continue to drop. That $8 price will most likely continue to fall at the historical annual rate of 22 percent. So what’s presented as an ISP insurance policy is really a guaranteed profit increase of 22 percent that will be compounded over time because consumption will continue to rise and customers will be for the first time charged for that increased consumption.
This isn’t about capping ISP losses, but are about increasing ISP profits. The caps are a built-in revenue bump that will kick-in 2-3 years from now, circumventing any existing regulatory structure for setting rates. The regulators just haven’t realized it yet. By the time they do it may be too late.
Most U. S. broadband customers don’t get anywhere near that 250 gigabyte cap. The few who do hit those limits are big gamers or file downloaders for the most part. Maybe they do take unfair advantage of the system, but the question is whether this is the proper way to control their consumption? I don’t think it is.
In time we will all bump into these caps and our Internet bills will suddenly double as a result, circumventing competition and ending a 15 year downward broadband price trend.
ISPs win, we lose.
[...] forced to add caps to prevent us users from sucking down too much data and bankrupting them. But Mr. Cringeley, in an excellent examination of the real bandwidth costs in America, proves them [...]
You know Bob, I really like reading your articles… even when they aggravate the hell out of me! This is a great explanation and we should all send the link to this story to our congressional reps.
I’ll like them better when they are journalism and not opinion.
Liked the article….great way to show exactly how companies get gov to bail water for them and fleece the public as a result…
“Heads I win, tails you lose”
Standard operating procedure in modern corporate America.
[...] forced to add caps to prevent us users from sucking down too much data and bankrupting them. But Mr. Cringeley, in an excellent examination of the real bandwidth costs in America, proves them [...]
An alternative to the commercial ISPs is a community broadband network: http://www.muninetworks.org
Ok, but what about infrastructure costs? What is the cost of delivering that bandwidth from the backbone to the premises and the costs of scaling that delivery channel to meet increased demand? How much of a factor is the relative complexity of the required infrastructure via geographic and demographic variations? Without bandwidth caps how much of a factor would degradation of service be if/when local delivery channels start to exceed capacity? What was the original business model for infrastructure buildout and have unexpected bandwidth demands caused a need for a change in that business model?
No one cares about why something the way it is. They just want to YELL AND SHOUT AND COMPLAIN!
I don’t know how significant the infrastructure costs are, but I know Verizon spent weeks if not months with tunneling all around my neighborhood to install their FiOS cables. That had to be expensive. I would like to see an analysis of when that gets paid off.
I recently discovered the ability to find out my household’s monthly bandwidth consumption (I’m a comcast user) and was surprised to discover that it has been averaging around 120GB/month but was close to 170GB for the current month (as of nearly a week ago). And yes, I have a 250GB cap.
Now I’m a software developer, so I have to download 4GB wodges of data (i.e. the latest version of XCode or whatever) quite frequently, but aside from that our only major bandwidth consumption is probably Netflix. We have a LOT of netflix devices, and this month my mother is staying with us and watching old episodes of Law & Order all day long.
It doesn’t take much IP video to hit the cap.
Tonio: “We have a LOT of netflix devices, and this month my mother is staying with us and watching old episodes of Law & Order all day long.
It doesn’t take much IP video to hit the cap.”
That is a non-sequitor!
Yes it does follow in view of the fact that since the early days of TV or cable it has been trivial for millions of people to watch TV simultaneously all day long. It’s only a big deal with the Internet and the need to impose data caps, which are reached too quickly, compared to the old-fashioned methods that have no need for caps.
[...] the cost of delivering bandwidth-intensive applications such as video over wireless networks and consumer adoption of those services. Those outcomes would be bad news for content providers and distributors dreaming [...]
[...] X. Cringely approached Midco’s usage chart from a different angle on his blog, delivering facts our readers already know: Americans are overpaying for their broadband service, [...]
Case in point: unlimited plan, but you have to pay more, on top of your unlimited plan, if you are using it too much:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-07-29/at-t-to-reduce-wireless-browsing-speeds-for-heaviest-5-of-data-consumers.html
[...] says tech pundit Robert X. Cringely (a.k.a. Mark Stephens). He argues that data caps are a ploy by ISPs to position themselves to increase their profits as data consumption explodes in the coming [...]
Triumph of the Nerd indeed… way to call it out like it is Bob. Many of these providers operate under the same guise as a airline, overbook hoping some won’t show even though they know they can’t provide the service to them all if they do show up.
I equate the whole telecommunications industry to that of ‘bait and switch’. Consumers don’t get what they pay for.
Overbooking is not inherently wrong. Ever since the beginning of telephone service the availability of dial tone was “overbooked”. Even now, you may have trouble getting a dial tone on mother’s day. The systems and thier pricing are based on average usage and the average revenue recieved. If the average usage goes up, eventually the capacity of the distribution point supplying that group of subscribers will be reached requiring caps or more revenue to pay for more capacity to that distrbution point.
Couple months late in rebuttal …
I get the whole premise of opex/capex and oversub’ing to make that all happen. I think perhaps you don’t get my point that model doesn’t fit well today yet they still hang onto it and make all kinds of excuses there-in for for there little rate-hikes.
I’m saying more people actually show up for the ‘flight’ and do a longer trip….that makes a huge difference over sub’d over not… watching streaming movies wasn’t around back in them good old days of providing tone, nor was skype or a million other bandwidth intensive apps…which I should mention, no not everyone does tone reliably still today in 2011. I notice.
ISP and telco’s just have not planned on people using the bandwidth they paid for 24×7, which is not out of the question in a world of video streaming. They simply can’t and won’t honor their contractual obligations because they can’t…utilization is through the roof on good chunk of $30-60/m customers.
Almost every system you ever use is oversubscribed. That’s life and the only affordable way to do it.
This is a preemptive strike against cord cutters. Streaming all your TV shows and movies via the internet with a 250GB cap would give you roughly 100 hours of HD content. This is a move on the part of Comcast and other ISP to protect their cable television side of the business. This needs to be stopped.
It’s BS, but can the ISP’s provide a revenue approved by a third party data meter? Electric and water utilities must, why not the ISP’s?
[...] says tech pundit Robert X. Cringely (a.k.a. Mark Stephens). He argues that data caps are a ploy by ISPs to position themselves to increase their profits as data consumption explodes in the coming [...]
[...] forced to add caps to prevent us users from sucking down too much data and bankrupting them. But Mr. Cringeley, in an excellent examination of the real bandwidth costs in America, proves them [...]
[...] says tech pundit Robert X. Cringely (a.k.a. Mark Stephens). He argues that data caps are a ploy by ISPs to position themselves to increase their profits as data consumption explodes in the coming [...]
u r a douchenozzle and a hypocrite.
You complain about ISP’s and their caps but then have them advertise on your site?
I don’t sell the ads and have no idea who is buying them. Frankly you have it precisely backward: if I was truly a douchenozzle I’d be writing columns specifically to PLEASE ISP advertisers, wouldn’t I?
Nice comeback, Cringe!
[...] My last column on broadband data caps rubbed the wrong way my old friend Brett Glass, an Internet Service Provider in Laramie, Wyoming. “Your most recent article regarding ISPs and bandwidth caps is misleading and inaccurate,” wrote Brett. “I hope you haven’t joined Bob Frankston’s ‘kill all service providers’ camp, because it sure seems like you have… Our bandwidth costs are $100 per megabit per second and are going UP due to increasing charges for middle mile bandwidth from Qwest/Centurylink and the FCC’s failure to act on special access.” [...]
If you want an unmetered Metro-E connection, be my guest – go out and buy one.
Don’t come complaining to me when you realize that it costs 10-30x what a consumer retail connection of the same speed costs.
Example: 10mbit DSL costs $50-$100 in a lot of areas
10mbit MetroE costs $800-2000 in commercial areas, more if you’re kind of in a far flung location.
Quit propagating this myth that there’s some unlimited fount of throughput and ISPs are withholding it just for the hell of it.
Dimwits like this Cringely guy and GigaOm are really getting old.
“Fortunately, at the same time bandwidth consumption is going up, backbone costs are going down and have been doing so for many years. The basic unit of ISP backbone expenditures is called IP Transit. Here’s a chart I found showing IP Transit prices per megabit in several cities over a period of years.”
Transit prices have been dropping due to arbitrage and ISPs that rarely have to carry the traffic more than 1 building.
Essentially there are a few Peer-Selling-ISPs that are connecting with broadband ISPs and erecting “toll booths” to sell OTHERS’ networks. E.g. Hurricane Electric can sell transit at $1/Mb as they rarely use their own network to carry this traffic. They mostly sell their peers networks.
I highly doubt anyone is building end to end backbone, metro and access network for the price of transit these days. So while Hurricane, Cogent, Level 3, NTT, etc sell the networks of Verizon, TimeWarner, Comcast, AT&T – this has a perception of network costs going down at below the capital cost to carry the traffic. So the reality is a Peer-Selling-ISP can undercut destination networks as they don’t have any of the costs. The middle-man is always cheaper than the network you want to reach.
Imagine if someone purchases 1 mile of highway on every major road in your state and put toll booths up. They can sell access to state highways without any ROI requirements around the full maintenance costs.
“That 250 gigabytes-per-month works out to about one megabit-per-second, which costs $8 in New York.”
To get $8 or less you need multi-Gig wholesale connections in a carrier hotels from a Peer-Selling-ISP. You should also factor in the space, power and other costs to do this. Apples vs. bushels of Oranges from the grove.
All Internet networks are priced and built based on an oversubscription model. Ultra-high end users change the oversubscription model which increases the cost of scaling the network for others. There comes a point where the terabyte user is no longer profitable and should be moved to a commercial tier where the access and metro network is sized and price for 24 hour full use.
To create the proper economics for the cost of growing the “dedicated/unlimited” network you can either lower the speed and offer unlimited or raise the price with the speed at unlimited (like commercial does).
Most (99% of us) really want higher speed for better interactive experience. We do not expect to run it 7×24 and fund the cost for that. Expecting everyone else to fund the extreme minority that feel entitled to 7x24xmax speed is not fair to the rest of us.
Internet Backbones, such as Hurricane Electric, Level3, Telia, etc have to pay to build and maintain international networks. All of these networks are on multiple continents.
The Internet backbones build out to interconnect with various regional networks in each part of the world (who in turn build out to sell connectivity to other smaller networks). This is how the major Internet backbones are able to provide global Internet connectivity. BTW, the cost to build and maintain these international Internet backbones is certainly not free, so whatever the scenario when they exchange traffic with access networks, it wasn’t free to haul that bandwidth to the access network, and claims to the otherwise by access networks are specious.
The Basic Economics of Internet in a Nutshell: The content companies (for example Amazon, Yahoo, Netflix etc) buy global Internet connectivity to reach human beings that use the Internet that have credit cards in their wallets. Human beings access the Internet through access providers, which tend to be either cable monopolies or telephone monopolies.
This means that at the end of the day, the access providers (access networks) have a choice between just interconnecting with other networks and Internet backbones for the sake of increasing capacity for their customers (which increases the quality and throughput of their service, and costs them money to pay for more router ports for their side of the connections) *or* they can try to get some of these other networks to pay them. Most of the time an access network is claiming congestion, it is because they are unwilling to freely interconnect with other networks because they would like to get paid both by their access customers and by the other networks in the world that are sending their customers traffic (double dipping).
Now they have a problem, they need to have some kind of connectivity to other networks, otherwise they don’t have any Internet service to sell. However would like to find new sources of revenue without introducing new services or expanding to new markets (greedy: as in want more money without delivering any new economic value).
Hence why they are instituting bandwidth caps on one side of the house for customers (ostensibly because they are overloaded), and on the other side of the house they are limiting the amount of bandwidth into their network.
To quote the sage: “I see what you did there…”
“Internet Backbones, such as Hurricane Electric, Level3, Telia, etc have to pay to build and maintain international networks. All of these networks are on multiple continents.”
The vast majority of Internet growth rarely uses national or international network capacity. These backbones don’t have to build/upgrade their core anywhere need the levels of the aggregation router they use to sell their peering edge (their toll booth to others networks). Bulk content growth is cached next to metro networks and therefore the “haul [of] that bandwidth to the access network” took place in a single building. The “hauling” is now the metro and access where the real growth costs are.
The historical economics of the Internet are related to traffic (bps) and distance carried….. not transactions (who sends, who receives, who requests, etc). You carry traffic on your network and have paying customers that both receive and send content (“double dipping”). I carry traffic on my network and have paying customers that both receive and send content. We exchange traffic between networks at no cost ONLY when we have a balance of trade in traffic and network infrastructure investment. “Double dipping” and balance of trade is an accurate description of how the Internet has always worked.
Now I agree the Internet players have changed. Access networks have built/purchased backbone/metro putting them in competition to sell transit (to senders). Backbone networks have built/purchased access and metro (receivers) growing an end to end infrastructure. CDNs have built closer to metro networks reducing the cost to deliver traffic (and getting a break on transit). Generally each of these parties have more or less network cost burden to carry bits. That said… the costs and business has not gone away (just shifted) and no one party should have to fund all the costs of sending or receiving bits.
“Double dipping” really means that both senders AND receives fund end to end infrastructure (the way the Internet has worked). Single dipping means only eyeballs pay, which is new and not very consumer friendly.
If your contention is there should not be a charge to deliver traffic or a trade balance between carriers, I would ask you who should pay for growth? Second who should be entitled to free traffic? Not sure a “free for a select few” model is best for the Internet, innovation or all consumers. The historical model has worked pretty well.
“Hence why they are instituting bandwidth caps on one side of the house for customers (ostensibly because they are overloaded), and on the other side of the house they are limiting the amount of bandwidth into their network.”
First, senders of traffic are limited only by what they ask for vs what they can do. ISP X not giving CDN A free ports on their network is not a limitation, it is business. ISP X not giving ISP Y (peer seller) unlimited free ports to sell to CDN A is not a limitation, it is balance of trade. CDN A choosing not to pay the same rate to ISP X directly (vs a peer seller) is also business and what is driving arbitrage keeping transit prices at record lows (some would say below cost to build)
Second, consumers pricing is based on a flat rate. Therefore those that use 1TB pay the same as those that use 50G or less. As you know, network models are based on oversubscription and as you have to dedicate capacity to a user the cost goes up to where one may be losing money. As speeds have increased the 7×24 bandwidth user adds even more and more burden on the cost.
Question: Which entity do you think should fund incremental infrastructure growth? Should all consumers pay the costs of unlimited usage of a select few? Should each user pay for their own usage? Should senders of traffic pay any network delivery costs of their traffic to users? If no, which senders get this entitlement? If yes, should the network that actually carries the traffic more than 1 building share in this settlement?
The new economics of this become very interesting.
Thinking about a situation as we have had. The price for end user is based on speed of connection and not number of bytes transferred. This is the “unlimited” plan.
Look at a graph showing how many users on the vertical and bandwidth on the horizontal. The height at any point tells the number of users that use that amount of bandwidth in a month (or a day, whatever). It will not be a normal distribution (think bell curve) but will fall steadily from left to right. More people use a small amount. Less people use a large amount.
That graph will always be the same shape. The only thing changing will be the numbers on the side and bottom of the graph. With time, the “data hogs” will use more but there still won’t be very many of them. With time, there will still be a lot of users using very little bandwidth but the definition of “very little” will rise.
My point? The fact that there are some users using a lot will always be the case. Setting a bandwidth limit is one bad thing. Some users using too much bandwidth is another bad thing. I prefer bad thing number 2 because I don’t trust the providers to keep the limit moving up as time goes by and bandwidth “needs” increase for end users. They want to increase profit without doing anything better. They seem to have no logic, just spin.
[...] tech pundit Robert X. Cringely (a.k.a. Mаrk Stephens). Hе argues thаt data caps аrе a ploy bу ISPs tο position themselves tο boost thеіr increase аѕ information output [...]
[...] says tech pundit Robert X. Cringely (a.k.a. Mark Stephens). He argues that data caps are a ploy by ISPs to position themselves to boost their increase as information expenditure explodes in a entrance [...]
Sad to see that “Cringely” is promoting blind, toxic, uninformed, stupid hatred of ISPs. He’s lost my respect.
First time I heard of him, so I guess I don’t have that loss.
[...] bandwidth costs are dropping, ISPs charge more by enacting bandwidth caps. The US, as usual, is the worst off. You’ll notice for example that backbone costs in Tokyo, [...]
[...] caps to avoid us users from sucking down an excessive amount of data and bankrupting them. But Mr. Cringeley , in a good examination of the genuine bandwidth costs in America, proves them [...]
[...] 2011 at 7:07 am and is filed under 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 [...]
Well, you did some analysis but are way shy of all your homework. Sure you can buy bandwidth in bulk at a carrier hotel in a major city, but what about the 4000+ wireless ISP’s out there serving all the rural areas. Did you price out the cost of getting a DS3 in podunk, IA? I bet not. And I say a DS3 because there IS NO FIBER in most of these places. There may not even be DS3′s. What about infrastructure costs? When was the last time you looked at tower rents, land leases, rooftop space, frequency licensing fees, right of way fees, microwave radio costs, and all the other costs involved in actually GETTING it to the customer and supporting the customer. Wireless technologies have limited throughput which means delivering this kind of bandwidth to the end user requires a lot more infrastructure meaning more gear in the air, meaning more interference to contend with since we can’t get our own frequency bands, which means more maintenance, which means more costs. And what about the people providing this content? Why does netflix or any other media streamer get a free ride on the carriers network? They don’t get to mail the DVD’s free through the mail, do they? Heck, I’d pay $8 month for ALL my postage, but I’d bet even the efficient federal gov’t couldn’t survive delivering mail for that rate. Next time you decide to take on an issue, why don’t you spend more than 10 minutes googling a couple nifty graphs and looking up some stats for Japan, and do some real research before stirring up a pot of crap you obviously know little about.
Actually, Cameron, the USPS already does lose billions of dollars a year. :-p
I know…my attempt at sarcasm.
Just what I was thinking. About half of Japan’s population lives in four metropolitan areas (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_metropolitan_areas_in_Japan_by_population), and their metro areas are much more densely populated than US metros (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_metropolitan_areas_by_population), so many of the costs associated with internet wiring will be lower in Japan than in the US.
I suspect Netflix already pays a huge amount for their network connections and the bandwidth they generate. I don’t call that a free ride.
[...] The excuses ISPs use is that these caps are necessary to ensure quality of service to the majority of subscribers. Credible reports dispute ISPs claims of increasing costs. [...]
[...] Cringely.com Sean W.I'm LTG's own sound guy. I'm all into sound tech and sound creation. I'm also into video games and have a tender spot for games that are extremely hard. I also work at an independent music store so I talk music every day. Follow me at twitter.com/ltgsean or email me directly at sean@lazytechguys.comRelated posts:AT&T Spends 1.9b for Wireless Spectrum; 4G Service IncomingVerizon iPhone Beats Sales Records Within HoursSony Xperia Play Launching in the Spring on VerizonGoogle May Be Planning To Compete Against Major Phone Companies In Mobile Payment ServiceNetflix CEO does not want to fight cableComcast to bring Skype video chat to TVSkype Video Finally on AndroidDroid 3 Preview: Third Time's The Charm….MaybeAnother 3D Phone is on The Way (LG Thrill)AT&T works with Verizon's LTE? NopeVZW Adds More 4GLTE Cities on August 18thMetroPCS to adopt VoLTE Next Year [...]
[...] Bandwidth caps are rate hikes Thursday, July 28th, 2011 at 7:07 am ” … Internet Service Providers … are trying to apply bandwidth caps to their users … Most of the press coverage of this issue comes down on the side of consumers but lately the ISP publicity machine has been revved-up and we’re being told that bandwidth caps are necessary, even inevitable. This is, as my 87 year-old Mom would say, BS. … If the ISPs can’t make money, we’re told, then we’ll all lose our Internet service. They’ve become “too big to fail. ” Remember that one? Fortunately, at the same time bandwidth consumption is going up, backbone costs are going down and have been doing so for many years. The basic unit of ISP backbone expenditures is called IP Transit. … No matter what your ISP says, their backbone costs are inconsequential and to argue otherwise is probably a lie. … These data caps are actually a trap being set for us by the ISPs. Data caps that may [but don’t] make logical sense today [still] make no sense tomorrow, yet once they are in place they’ll tend to stay in place. IP Transit costs will continue to drop. That $8 price will most likely continue to fall at the historical annual rate of 22 percent. So what’s presented as an ISP insurance policy is really a guaranteed profit increase of 22 percent that will be compounded over time because consumption will continue to rise and customers will be for the first time charged for that increased consumption. This isn’t about capping ISP losses, but are about increasing ISP profits. The caps are a built-in revenue bump that will kick-in 2-3 years from now, circumventing any existing regulatory structure for setting rates. The regulators just haven’t realized it yet. By the time they do it may be too late. … In time we will all bump into these caps and our Internet bills will suddenly double as a result, circumventing competition and ending a 15 year downward broadband price trend. ISPs win, we lose. … " http://www.cringely.com/2011/07/bandwidth-caps-are-rate-hikes/ [...]
If you want to hear some interesting information around what internet bandwidth costs, you should listen to the podcast on 4/20/11 from:
http://www.howstuffworks.com/podcasts/brainstuff.rss
“What does a gigabyte of internet access really cost?”
It was quite eye-opening
I’ve heard a lot about this lately.. why are more companies throttling bandwidth after a particular cap on a so-called UNLIMITED plan? And why are companies dropping it all together?
So far I love my Spring service and they sound better every single day. I haven’t heard anything about them doing this nonsense to us.
[...] Bandwidth caps are rate hikes Internet Service Providers in the USA are trying to apply bandwidth caps to their users, with those caps being 2, 4, or 5 gigabytes-per-month for wireless users at various price levels and generally 250 gigabytes-per-month for home users. Most of the press coverage of this issue comes down on the side of consumers but lately the ISP publicity machine has been revved-up and we’re being told that bandwidth caps are necessary, even inevitable. This is, as my 87 year-old Mom would say, BS. Share this post: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. [...]
[...] Bandwidth caps are rate hikes [...]
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[...] forced to add caps to prevent us users from sucking down too much data and bankrupting them. But Mr. Cringeley, in an excellent examination of the real bandwidth costs in America, proves them [...]
This is an important idea since it fits with how people learn. We know that the two key elements in learning are social and affect.
I’m curious about the 2 key learning elements you stated. Learning how to learning has been a life long search for me. (50+yrs + reading materail + workshops ect) Perhaps for me the terms you used are labeling complex data or just semantics. However, I am still curious. If you would like to inlighten me and have the time I would appreciate it very much. Especially the social. The affect is interesting. At this point my frame of reference is, accurate data on the delvelopment of the creation of the words, the phonetic aliement to produce the sounds the signal represent in accordane with vowel signal + stress indicators, the 26 letters abc’s multiple repreintations according to how the signal the sound, or indicate no sound by the rules of nature. And much more mainly the interaction of the person and the brain. The brain reserach is amazing. Thanks
[...] TELECOM AND CABLE PROVIDERS SCREW CUSTOMERS WITH DATA CAPS. Telecom / cable providers are among the worst scoring industries in major satisfaction rankings… and part of it is the lack of transparency. Technology writer, Bob Cringely, lays bare ISPs’ scheme for using data caps as a profit tool. [...]
read to understand… http://www.hyperorg.com/misc/stupidnet.html
p.s. Great article Robert.
[...] The excuses ISPs use is that these caps are necessary to ensure quality of service to the majority of subscribers. Credible reports dispute ISPs claims of increasing costs. [...]
homework help…
[...]I, Cringely » Blog Archive » Bandwidth caps are rate hikes – Cringely on technology[...]…
below is a paragraph i wrote on what must be done before we all see the end of the internet as we know it our net is worse that that of third world countries
they are beginning to enforce caps in my area as well, this is detrimental to the conveyance of information in America. Our isp’s have created a monopoly and are making profit from the ignorance of their users. We as a people at this point have only one way of fighting back. That is to stand up together and once and for all Completely and utterly destroy them financially by going on strike. by canceling our service. phone, internet, cable. until they see that we as a people will not be walked on like trash. In essence we need to form a union of consumers. we need to select a date of when the strike will begin and do it. All of America at once when it hits their wallets bad enough maybe we can beat the stupid out of them. go to your facebook, your twitter, your myspace if you still use it, your youtube, your blog, and start posting this idea. Don’t let this stop here we need to push this as far as it can go to make a change. If we don’t. we will never be able to. don’t let a about month or so of no phone, cable, or internet deter you from doing what you were meant to do to stand up and say no I will not spend the rest of my life wishing I could watch that movie, or call my cousin, or play that game come on people let’s do this thing now
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