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posted by mrpg on Tuesday August 08 2017, @10:40AM   Printer-friendly
from the the-new-normal dept.

A company that tracks ISPs and data caps in the US has identified 196 home Internet providers that impose monthly caps on Internet users. Not all of them are enforced, but customers of many ISPs must pay overage fees when they use too much data.

BroadbandNow, a broadband provider search site that gets referral fees from some ISPs, has more than 2,500 home Internet providers in its database. This list includes telecommunications providers that are registered to provide service under the government's Lifeline program, which subsidizes access for poor people. BroadbandNow's team looked through the ISPs' websites to generate a list of those with data caps.

BroadbandNow excluded mobile providers from its list of ISPs with data caps, since caps are nearly universal among cellular companies. The list of 196 providers with caps includes 89 offering fixed wireless service, 45 fiber ISPs, 35 DSL ISPs, 63 cable ISPs, and two satellite providers. Some offer Internet service using more than one technology. Some of the providers are tiny, with territories covering just 100 or a few hundred people.

Data cap analysis found almost 200 ISPs imposing data limits in the US


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  • (Score: 2) by Wootery on Wednesday August 09 2017, @08:09AM (6 children)

    by Wootery (2341) on Wednesday August 09 2017, @08:09AM (#551006)

    Look at the pricing model for mobile data. You essentially pay per megabyte, but they don't really charge you for the speed of the connection you want. Everyone gets essentially the best speed on offer from the provider. I see nothing wrong with this model, and I see no reason to feel outraged over change.

    If your problem is that you think the ISPs are charging unfair prices, that's a completely different question.

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  • (Score: 2) by urza9814 on Wednesday August 09 2017, @01:23PM (5 children)

    by urza9814 (3954) on Wednesday August 09 2017, @01:23PM (#551080) Journal

    Speed would seem to be more directly related to their costs than data caps. If they've got a cable that can carry 1 gbps, it can do that all day and all night with no problem. It's not going to last any longer by running it at half speed.

    Today, most non-mobile ISPs claim to be selling you a particular speed...but that speed varies based on how many others are using the same service. At the start of the month everyone uses heavily, and your service gets worse. Towards the end of the month, some people have hit their caps so there's less usage and your quality improves. Meanwhile some of their lines are now sitting idle and the service quality (the thing they advertised) is variable while the total bandwidth (the thing they often don't even discuss) is fixed!

    What would make more sense IMO would be to sell a guaranteed minimum speed, rather than selling a maximum ("up to..."). So they might guarantee 10mbps, and during peak times you will get 10mbps. But off-peak you might get 50. There's no technical reason not to max out that infrastructure all the time.

    • (Score: 2) by Wootery on Wednesday August 09 2017, @01:41PM (4 children)

      by Wootery (2341) on Wednesday August 09 2017, @01:41PM (#551082)

      it can do that all day and all night with no problem

      Unless of course the contention over the airwaves causes slowdown for other users.

      There's no technical reason not to max out that infrastructure all the time.

      You just explained the reason: it's slower for everyone. Most customers care about the performance they can generally expect in real usage, not the performance they are totally guaranteed to get. Running the networks at full saturation all the time necessarily means everyone gets worse performance. It's not unreasonable that the pricing model discourage heavy usage.

      On top of this, who'd want to be the first telco to advertise the pitiful bandwidth they can totally guarantee?

      • (Score: 2) by urza9814 on Wednesday August 09 2017, @02:03PM (3 children)

        by urza9814 (3954) on Wednesday August 09 2017, @02:03PM (#551093) Journal

        Unless of course the contention over the airwaves causes slowdown for other users.

        Right...I was mostly talking about fixed line infrastructure, same as TFA...mobile is a bit different since you can't know the number of users to expect on a particular tower at any given time.

        You just explained the reason: it's slower for everyone. Most customers care about the performance they can generally expect in real usage, not the performance they are totally guaranteed to get. Running the networks at full saturation all the time necessarily means everyone gets worse performance. It's not unreasonable that the pricing model discourage heavy usage.

        But their current model encourages usage patterns that degrade that service. They'll sell you a better speed than they can actually deliver, and they'll *try* to give you that speed all the time. So at peak times instead of a guaranteed minimum service quality you get massively degraded service compared to what you signed up for and might even lose service entirely. Peak times are, by definition, when most people are trying to use the service. So it doesn't do anyone any good if you're advertising speeds that they can only achieve when they aren't using it. On the other hand, more flexible speed limits would encourage people to move heavy loads into off-peak hours, providing better service for everyone else.

        • (Score: 2) by Wootery on Wednesday August 09 2017, @02:47PM (2 children)

          by Wootery (2341) on Wednesday August 09 2017, @02:47PM (#551119)

          If you'll forgive a digression: I wonder how much of the 'peak times' problem comes from Netflix refusing to embrace offline viewing.

          Apparently [netflix.com] it's now possible on Windows 10. If they allowed it on the major games consoles, I imagine that would moves things forward considerably.

          • (Score: 2) by urza9814 on Wednesday August 09 2017, @03:57PM (1 child)

            by urza9814 (3954) on Wednesday August 09 2017, @03:57PM (#551169) Journal

            If you'll forgive a digression: I wonder how much of the 'peak times' problem comes from Netflix refusing to embrace offline viewing.

            Oh god, yeah I can talk about that for a bit... :)

            Don't care much personally, but it'd be great for my parents. They were just starting to cut the cord and switch to streaming services when they moved and had to go from cable internet to satellite. Now they pretty much can't stream anything at all because of data caps...though they just got a better plan with a 20 gig cap, so they'll watch a show here and there, but they had to mostly switch back to network programming when they moved. But the satellite provider gives a second, higher cap for data between 2am and 5am (something close to that anyway). So if they could queue up Netflix downloads at night, they could keep streaming. Doesn't even need to be a PC -- I'm sure a Raspberry Pi would have about enough power to handle that as a set-top-box, and it'd easily be worth a hundred bucks or more if it lets them cut back that satellite package. And then Netflix can add all the DRM they want to keep the studios happy, as I assume that's part of the roadblock here.

            Of course, Netflix probably has only a small handful of customers on satellite connections, so what do they care? But if more ISPs promoted off-peak usage, there would be more incentive for them to build such systems. Maybe we could even do something like the "smart grid" proposals, by having your PC contact your ISP to negotiate a preferred download time to keep the load more even...

            • (Score: 2) by Wootery on Thursday August 10 2017, @08:47AM

              by Wootery (2341) on Thursday August 10 2017, @08:47AM (#551524)

              Set-top boxes are a good point. Here in the UK, Sky's boxes can download content from iPlayer for offline viewing (which isn't generally possible). Clearly the BBC trust Sky's boxes, DRM-wise.

              Of course, it would take a set-top box not run by a company in competition with Netflix. I think games consoles would be a good start.