ISP Broadband Data Limitations

Isn't really anything new. Same as Data Speeds, some people living in Rural area's still can't get 1Mb broadband which is below what is supposed to be Netflix's recommended speed min of 1.5Mb

Over here in the UK then typically the ISP's all launched "unlimited" plans saying you can download movies, catchup tv online gaming etc.

When people actually started doing this then they all started complaining about the amount of bandwidth being used by BBC iPlayer etc, and wanted the BBC etc to cough up more money towards upgrading there connections as we took them at there word.

Seeing similar thing where Netflix has just signed up with Comcast to connect more directly with Comcast etc, so that the traffic isn't held up.

Problem is that there will always be a battle between the ISP's who have to carry the traffic and the Content Providers like BBC with iPlayer and the Netflix/LoveFilm etc of our world over how the pot gets shared. The ISP's are after a bigger slice but your Internet Connection has become commoditised with people expecting it to be fast and plentiful and is now low margin.

Effectively the ISP's haven't really planned well and people are using there connection more then the ISP planned. The Content Providers are apparently making good money from selling the Content which is distributed over the Internet so are only paying for there Local Connections.

Unsurprisingly the ISP's want a bigger slice of the pie.

 

I stream A LOT and most months i use a little more than 100GB. a few i was in the 270GB range and dropped

if your family streams TV 24x7 and never does anything else then you might be in trouble. if you do lots of different things as well as watch TV it won't be a problem

 

I average around 2TB a month. Unlimited will probably go away once Comcast takes over Time Warner.

 

I hope that Verizon FiOS will never institute a limit on data usage; I love my 75Mbps/35Mbps plan. Most of my TV watching is data streaming either through Netflix, Hulu+ or iTunes store. I probably use at least 200GB/day.

 

Go to a new country.
45€ for 100/100Mbit with real unlimited. No throttling, no torrent frustrating, fixed IP, porn servers allowed. Our Pot smoking freedom applied to broadband.

But then again, the country is small, we are on the busiest internet-highway in the world (Amsterdam Frankfurt), EU traffic is 4 times the US traffic even without a decent roll-out of Netflix.

 

I'm paying my ISP ( Virgin Media ) here in the UK £39 a month for BB only. It's the fastes package they do, and I have never been throttled or warned about the extent of my usage...If I was, I'd walk. For that money I expect ( and get) truly unlimited usage. Most of my streaming is pretty much "In House" as I have a 4TB collection of movies, documentaries etc, all available via wifi and stored on my Pegasus R4 and backed up to a 4TB Seagate.

I do own stuff in the cloud, but decided that with the odd outage etc. having my media stored at home is a better way. The only issue is that if my collection gets much larger, I will have to buy larger drives..

 

The "unofficial" cap is 10TB a month. People have been warned for as few as 4TB though.

https://secure.dslreports.com/forum/r28606597-Verizon-just-sent-me-a-letter-for-excessive-usage-pic-

 

10TB is a lot. What are they doing to average 10TB a month?!??

 

Fortunately I'm grandfathered into an unlimited plan for about $61 a month after taxes. I'm in Canada. I probably could never get a plan like that if I were a new customer. But they've raised that price a couple times since I signed up for it 4 years ago.

 

So how have sales been impacted? Streaming services and devices seem to be gaining in popularity. Bandwith caps aren't anything new by a very long shot.

 

Video is already highly compressed

 

Idiots and **********. Google Fiber cannot roll out fast enough...

 

I have Bell Fibe (Fiber optic) internet here in Canada. It's 50 MB up and down, with a 175 GB data cap. Since I have three services with them, I've opted for their unlimited internet for an extra $10 a month. If you only have internet with them, unlimited is an extra $30 / month, or $20 with two services.
It's a good thing that I added the unlimited, because I'm averaging about 225 GB to 260 GB a month. We pretty much just watch Netflix and shows / movies purchased or rented on the Apple TV.

 

Couch potatoes

 

same thing here, just with rogers.

 

absolutely, and the prices will go up too.

 

In Atlanta we are the test bed for Comcast's data caps. The only good news is you get 3 months to go over (not sure if it's lifetime or year or....) and an additional 50GB for $10 after you exceed 300GB for the month (so not cut off or throttled).

Please hurry up and get started Google Fiber.

 

lol, I would have $340 in overage charges a month under that system.

The whole data cap thing with home broadband is just a scam. For instance, it doesn't cost them hardly anything if you are maxing out your connection from midnight to 7am, because most people are asleep so all the bandwidth in your neighborhood is freed up. The more "honest" approach (if even needed) would be to throttle your bandwidth to reasonable levels during high network loads, and then back off when not needed. I'm really interested to see if these low data caps are here to stick around, especially with stuff like Netflix 4K now here ready to eat up all your bandwidth.

 

Google Fiber trucks have been spotted near Grant Park