ISP Broadband Data Limitations

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Ed217

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Nov 7, 2012
357
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Virginia
There is lots of talk about an ATV (or other similar unit) that produces a great internet TV device. Putting all the content issues aside, there is one weak link that may affect many potential owners...ISP data limits.

Many ISP firms now have monthly data limits based on plan. Cheaper plans have smaller limits. But more and more seem to be going this direction. Locally Cox has about 4 plans ranging from 100GB to 400 GB (around 45$ to 99$). Those with HDTV Smart TVs today may find its quite easy to chew up 10GB or more a day with modest watching. Add a family and a couple of sets going, and it could be larger still.

Seems like this could be a real issue for any firm with a Internet based TV device. Maybe compression or something else would step in, but seems like a bit of a stumbling block...

Thoughts?
 

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mcnallym

macrumors 6502a
Oct 28, 2008
713
220
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.
 
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alent1234

macrumors 603
Jun 19, 2009
5,667
122
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
 
S

StinDaWg

macrumors 6502
Apr 5, 2012
295
0
I average around 2TB a month. Unlimited will probably go away once Comcast takes over Time Warner.
 
thatoneguy82

thatoneguy82

macrumors 68000
Jul 23, 2008
1,892
2
Beach Cities, CA
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.
 
B

blanka

macrumors 68000
Jul 30, 2012
1,549
3
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.
 
Macman45

Macman45

macrumors G5
Jul 29, 2011
13,196
133
Somewhere Back In The Long Ago
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..:)
 
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Ed217

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Nov 7, 2012
357
81
Virginia
alent1234 said:
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
Click to expand...
Streaming HDTV content seems much more dense. Cox will show you daily use, and its averaging 10-12 GB a day here. That's for something like 3-4 hours of content a day.
 
S

StinDaWg

macrumors 6502
Apr 5, 2012
295
0
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twobelowpar

macrumors regular
Dec 7, 2013
105
18
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.
 

Menel

Menel

macrumors 603
Aug 4, 2011
6,212
1,050
Ed217 said:
There is lots of talk about an ATV (or other similar unit) that produces a great internet TV device. Putting all the content issues aside, there is one weak link that may affect many potential owners...ISP data limits.



Many ISP firms now have monthly data limits based on plan. Cheaper plans have smaller limits. But more and more seem to be going this direction. Locally Cox has about 4 plans ranging from 100GB to 400 GB (around 45$ to 99$). Those with HDTV Smart TVs today may find its quite easy to chew up 10GB or more a day with modest watching. Add a family and a couple of sets going, and it could be larger still.



Seems like this could be a real issue for any firm with a Internet based TV device. Maybe compression or something else would step in, but seems like a bit of a stumbling block...



Thoughts?
Click to expand...

Video is already highly compressed
 
R

Robisan

macrumors 6502
Jan 19, 2014
347
2,035
$5 discounts fail to lure Time Warner customers to broadband data caps

For the vast majority of Time Warner Cable customers, a measly $5 discount isn't enough to give up unlimited Internet.

Out of Time Warner's roughly 11 million customers, just “thousands” have taken the discount in exchange for a 30 GB data cap. Time Warner Cable Chairman and CEO Rob Marcus revealed the slow uptake for tiered data at an industry conference in Florida, LightReading reports.

Marcus said subscribers' median data use is in the “high twenties” every month, suggesting that many users would be better off with capped data. This arguably overlooks the notion that customers don't want to feel restricted by a monthly cap, or risk overage charges of $1 per GB on the months where they do exceed the cap.

more...
Click to expand...
Idiots and **********. Google Fiber cannot roll out fast enough...
 
E

Ed217

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Nov 7, 2012
357
81
Virginia
Menel said:
Video is already highly compressed
Click to expand...
Not enough apparently. Since moving from an Apple TV based streaming service to a Samsung Smart TV platform, the total used has about doubled. Not totally sure why, just that it has. Today the average (1 set) is about 10GB a day, roughly double what it was 2 months ago. Viewing has been about the same.

Cox will show you daily totals, and when out of the house a lot, the use drops to almost nothing.
 
M

Madmic23

macrumors 6502a
Apr 21, 2004
662
422
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.
 
L

linds15

macrumors 6502a
Oct 16, 2012
534
1
Great White North
Madmic23 said:
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.
Click to expand...
same thing here, just with rogers.
 
Julien

Julien

macrumors G4
Jun 30, 2007
11,153
3,861
Atlanta
StinDaWg said:
I average around 2TB a month. Unlimited will probably go away once Comcast takes over Time Warner.
Click to expand...
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.

 
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StinDaWg

macrumors 6502
Apr 5, 2012
295
0
Julien said:
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.
Click to expand...
lol, I would have $340 in overage charges a month under that system. :rolleyes:

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.
 
Last edited:
Menel

Menel

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Aug 4, 2011
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