Frontier DSL deems 5Gb "reasonable" usage per month

[BrianRecchia]

Well the Catskills are in New York, so I must assume you're from there. Can you get Optimum Online (http://www.optimum.net)? It's very fast, reasonably priced, I get the advertised bandwidth, and I've never had a problem with them.

 

[LizKat]

If there are not any enforced caps, I think you are just creating a problem for yourself where there is none. They just state their corporate opinion that 5GB is a reasonable amount of use, but you are free to disagree and use as much as you like. If they start charging more or slowing you down when you go over 5GB, then you can claim that they broke your contract and leave without early cancellation penalty. Otherwise, you just sound like an unreasonable, angry man.

I doubt anyone would mistake me for an unreasonable, angry man. Maybe a raving maniac when I haven't eaten lunch by 2pm, but anyway i am not a guy, I'm a chick ...well,,, an old hen

Maybe I should have put more smiling faces in my previous posts. Anyway I thought I made it clear that Frontier reps and I were all staying polite with each other. I am not even the type to hang up and curse someone after the disconnect. I am not mad at Frontier, more like bemused, partly amused but surely confused.

At least one manager at Frontier has indeed said to me that for now I can go ahead and be just like I was before I discovered the cap. But I was already over the new cap for July when the policy was revised, I told him. Yah, he said, so what. It's ok for now, we are not measuring or monitoring or applying penalties.

It's tempting to accept that and just carry on. And yes, it would certainly be simpler than what I'm going to do. But I have to do what makes me feel comfortable that I am protected against undefined penalties among the new terms Frontier has made official as of July 23.

So I have to opt out. It's irritating, but it's not the end of the world, and as far as I am concerned it's not even the end of my relationship with Frontier for DSL in the future. I just cannot stay in that contract under new terms that I do not comprehend.

And that's leaving aside the whole wonderment of what on earth could their management have been thinking!?

Among other wonderings, why make a constraining move on customers in these economic times? The heavy hitters are the ones least likely to cancel their accounts when the choice is steak and eggs versus DSL and peanut butter, so... uh... now Frontiers puts on a restrictive cap they're not enforcing YET but with no promise to tier up from it LATER and they do this in largely duopoly arenas versus mostly TWC, whose print shop is probably finalizing special offer brochures this weekend? I would like to think I don't understand this because I just don't have an MBA.

I need a little timeout from Frontier and then I'll be back.

 

[Cory5412]

Wow, that's an insane quota cap.

I'm on frontier when I'm at my parents' house here in Arizona, and just in the past few evenings I think I've used more than 5 gigs of transfer on Skype conferencing with a few friends. And I know last month, I transferred sixteen or so gigs of Microsoft betas, and bought some things on iTunes, listened to a bunch of podcasts, etc.

It's reassuring to know they aren't applying the cap yet -- but it's terrifying to know that at some undefined point in the future, they will decide that it's unreasonable to download some trial or beta Microsoft software, or to do skype conferencing for any length of time. Imagine if my connection were actually fast enough to do a multi-way iChat video conference!

One weird thing: Frontier's product pages for Internet access list a 256k connection, and it looks like the 256k connection doesn't suffer from "FREE 5GB of data transfer!" like the normal 1m connection does. Is the way around quotas going to be using a slower service?

 

[dextertangocci]

That makes me feel better about South Africa's crappy broadband

 

[LizKat]

/snip/ One weird thing: Frontier's product pages for Internet access list a 256k connection, and it looks like the 256k connection doesn't suffer from "FREE 5GB of data transfer!" like the normal 1m connection does. Is the way around quotas going to be using a slower service?

Wow, that's a sharp-eyed observation about the 256k connection option being mentioned separately. It does make a distinction on that page.

I wonder if it's only relevant in areas where they have not rolled out higher speed access, or if you can actually take that as part of an internet package and then ignore the 5GB cap.

When you look in the shop part of their site where they give the details of the packages for phone, phone and net, or those plus TV, then they just speak of high speed internet and don't price out the 256k separately. Or maybe that's just in my area.

It would be irritating to babysit a queue of TV shows at 256k, eh? Reminds me of back when I downloaded audio on a 56k dialup.

I kind of wonder why they think it's ok to charge the 1.5GB granny-emailers the same package price they are charging me or will be charging me for my 5GB cap. I mean it's not like the grannies knew they were signing up for some minimum amount of bandwidth, right? Maybe they would like a 1.5GB tier, you think? For a whole freaking lot less money?

Frontier is opening some can of worms with this thing. I bet the FCC will help straighten some of those little wrigglers out, though. They could start by saying 5GB a month sounds like internet of 1993.

 

[nanofrog]

Reminds me of back when I downloaded audio on a 56k dialup.

Eww! Now you've given me the cringes.