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  (Source: ArsTechnica)

Much of America have only one or two ISP service options. As a result of lack of competition, Americans see much higher prices. ISPs are looking to drive prices even higher with data caps.  (Source: Ars Technica/Pew Internet & American Life Project April 2009 Survey)

U.S. representative Eric Massa is looking to reign in what he views as an anticompetitive industry -- the nation's internet service providers. Despite lobbyist threats, Rep. Massa has introduced a bill that would allow the FTC to veto predatory ISP data caps.
New bill looks to make sure customers get fair usage plans

Time Warner and other broadband internet providers have recently sought to impose data caps on users' "unlimited" connections.  Customers exceeding these data caps would typically be hit with large fines.  Meanwhile, many of these same companies have fought to outlaw municipal internet efforts that provided faster, uncapped service at better prices.

Congressman Eric Massa who represents a district in western New York is looking to take a stand against what he perceives as an abusive industry.  He has written a bill, which is going to be introduced to the U.S. House of Representatives which would grant the Federal Trade Commission authority to veto ISP data capping plans.

In the bill Rep. Massa argues that broadband internet has become essential to the U.S.'s high tech leadership, being used for "agricultural, medical, educational, environmental, library, and nonprofit purposes."  He argues that a prevalence of ISP monopolies or duopolies (such as the Time Warner Cable/Comcast duo in Rep. Massa's home district) threatens these uses.

In a press conference he warned, "Volume-based pricing is detrimental to our economy.  I became aware of this issue when Rochester doctors said it would have a catastrophic impact.  They rely on broadband for their professional work, and pricing would triple their bill.  Volume usage charges for broadband Internet access that are substantially above cost in a market without sufficient competition constitute an unfair and unconscionable practice, as substantially above-cost pricing has anti-competitive and anti-consumer effects on Internet use."

Rep. Massa also suggests that without a ban on data capping, ISPs could use the tactic to stunt the growth of online video.  This could be used as an anticompetitive tool to help them peddle their digital cable services, which most ISPs also provide.

Recent surveys seems to back Rep. Massa's claims.  A study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project discovered that ISPs across America are benefiting from an escape from open capitalism; in markets where there's 2 ISPs or less, they make on average $120 per customer per year more than in areas with 4 ISPs or less.  Many areas across America only have one or two providers, currently and ISPs are working to eliminate alternative providers, such as municipal efforts.

Meanwhile, Americans have shown to increasingly view internet services as essential.  A recent study indicated many more Americans cut cable TV or phone service than internet service to make ends meet during the recent recession.

Rep. Massa faces a tough fight from colleagues who support the ISPs point of view and lobbyists.  He says he's already been threatened and warned by lobbyists and senior colleagues.  He says he's confident that he'll "be burned in Internet effigy", but remains undeterred.

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Finally!
By rudolphna on 6/22/2009 9:32:02 AM , Rating: 5
It's time somebody had the balls to stand up to these idiots. Thank god I also live in the state where this guy has some say. Granted, I live in the other half of the state, but still in New York. Where I live, there is three options- Time Warner Cable, DSL, and Dial up. Thus, we use TWC, but I'm not happy about it. . The fastest DSL here is only 768KB/s, not nearly fast enough for our needs.

These ISPs have had their fun, its time to crack down and get serious. No more monopolies, no more getting states to ban small startup companies because they are better than them. And finally, NO MORE DATA CAPS. I know I go over 40GB a month every month. Its not very hard if you have five people that use the computer everyday. This must pass.




RE: Finally!
By JasonMick (blog) on 6/22/2009 9:41:03 AM , Rating: 5
Well said. I find data caps especially egregious when the service is billed as "unlimited". Personally I was once burned by such a contract on a Verizon "unlimited" broadband card service -- a couple thousand dollar overage for several gigabytes convinced me to never use their service again. I suppose the good part was that it was an eye-opening experience (I now read the fine print much more carefully).

As you said, thanks to the inferior quality of DSL/dialup offerings, consumers are essentially forced to pick a monopoly or from a duopoly in many areas.

Hopefully the logic of this proposal will override the money of lobbyists and corruption in the House. And hopefully the FTC officials have the integrity to use such provisions fully if the law is passed and not be coerced. May be too much to hope for, but call me an eternal optimist.


RE: Finally!
By Solandri on 6/22/2009 11:27:49 AM , Rating: 2
quote:
I find data caps especially egregious when the service is billed as "unlimited".

That's really the problem. There's nothing wrong with caps and metered pricing per se. The cell phone companies (I can't believe I'm using them as an example of the right way to do things) have been doing that forever. You buy a 500 minute plan or a 1000 minute plan, with the full knowledge that going over will cost you extra. Likewise, the water and power companies charges based on how much electricity you use, and it probably has different tiers of pricing based on monthly consumption.

The problem comes about when a company offers something as "unlimited" when it's really not. That's false advertising at best. An unlawful contract (one where the fine print contradicts the big print) at worst.


RE: Finally!
By AlexWade on 6/22/2009 11:44:48 AM , Rating: 5
quote:
That's really the problem. There's nothing wrong with caps and metered pricing per se.


I disagree. There IS something wrong with metering internet usage. It is fundamentally different than with cell phones. With cell phones, a minute is a minute today, tomorrow, and forever. If you had the same plan in 10 years, you would not need to worry about new advancements in cell phones to cause you to use more minutes. The only thing that could change with cell minutes is if a company was charging by the seconds instead of rounding up to the minute like most do. With the internet, new advancements are causing us to use more and more. In 10 years time, it may be possible to stream a HD quality movie straight to your computer. In 10 years, you will be using more bytes.

We must stop tiered pricing and metered internet today! If an ISP is successful doing this, all others will fall in line and everyone except the meager uncommon users will see their bill increase.


RE: Finally!
By omnicronx on 6/22/2009 1:40:44 PM , Rating: 2
I don't think its fundamentally different. You make the statement that a minute is forever, but the price you pay for a minute has not remained the same. Over the past 10-15 years our cell phone usage has increased, and our rates have decreased.. Thus you cannot make the claim that a minute 15 years ago is a minute today, as the price ratio and usage is totally different.

When it comes down to it an Unlimited internet plan of 10 years ago did not make the same impact as it does today. In past years many users would be hard pressed to reach 50GB of downloads per month, today this number is small for a large percentage of internet users. While I do not agree one bit with marketing a limited plan as unlimited, I do think there is a place for caps if marketed correctly. There should be tier'd plans with the highest being unlimited for a fair price.

Cell phones will soon have the same problem as bandwidth usage increases, so ISPS will not be alone.

I know many may not agree, but just compare this statement to say gasoline. A gallon is a gallon, today, tomorrow, and yesterday, but the price you pay for said gallon and the consumption rate changes as time goes on. Thus a gallon from 1960 and a gallon from today cannot be weighed equally.


RE: Finally!
By borismkv on 6/22/2009 3:40:01 PM , Rating: 3
The problem is that most of these ISPs are setting up a system that effectively does away with unlimited bandwidth in lieu of tiered pricing. This results in the cost of their services tripling, in some cases, for the exact same services they were providing less than a week ago. Others are using the tier system to force people who want unlimited bandwidth to purchase over a hundred dollars in extra services (Digital cable, digital voice, etc). Pushing these extra services out costs the cable company very very little extra as the signals travel over the same wires to the same locations.

Until the cable companies (I would note that very few, if any, DSL providers are moving to tiered systems in the US) upgrade their systems to handle all of the crap their shoving down the pipes, I am not willing to listen to their claims that Unlimited Bandwidth pricing is unsustainable. They are the idiots that keep trying to push more and more unnecessary data through the same infrastructure. They're throwing themselves into an unsustainable situation because they're greedy as hell. Plain and simple.


RE: Finally!
By omnicronx on 6/22/2009 4:34:08 PM , Rating: 2
I mainly agree with you, I was mostly just commenting on his minutes = minutes comment.

The problem I see here is that stopping ISP's from capping their service will not solve anything. There is still essentially a monopoly in most markets in the US when it comes to most ISP's. All that not allowing caps will do is lower the quality of service. This is what happens when there is no competition, and the government locks out their only real way to increase profits without putting a lot of money into infrastructure.

Really its a doubled edged sword, while they can no longer cap you, there really is no incentive to better your service which overtime with increased load, could actually decrease.

The problem is not the capps, but the lack of competition throughtout most areas in the US. I think they should do what they did here in Canada with our phone monopoly a while back. Force ISPS to allow competitors to piggyback on their networks for a fair price. This will do far more than any bandwidth cap ever could. It will open up the market to other ISPS until they have the capital to fund their own infrastructure in the area which will further increase competition.


RE: Finally!
By wifiwolf on 6/22/2009 8:32:11 PM , Rating: 2
exactly. this is the main problem. we only have these pricings in europe and asia because there is competition.


RE: Finally!
By Mint on 6/22/09, Rating: -1
RE: Finally!
By almvtb on 6/22/2009 9:54:29 PM , Rating: 3
The problem with tired pricing of internet usage is that you are not 100% in control of it. Using the same cell phone example from before, you have complete control over weather you answer you phone or not. If your number is often mistaken for pizza hut you simply only answer the phone when you know the number. On the other hand if a few thousand people begin to ping your ip address because they think you are google. You do not have the same option. You could sign up for the lowest download tier, and with out doing anything have your network usage sky rocket. Or let’s say you upset some young kid with a bot net. They get your IP address and bombard your IP with crap data. You could be out a lot of money.

The other major problem is that data usage is not something that most people understand. Do you have a meter that tells you how much data you download? I do not do any p2p downloading, but I do use video streaming. Over the course of the past month I have downloaded 37.5 gigabytes of data. I know that number, because I do monitor my Internet usage. 90% of the world does not have any idea how much bandwidth they use.


RE: Finally!
By borismkv on 6/23/2009 1:29:02 AM , Rating: 4
See, you're stuck with the uninformed belief that bandwidth is the same as something more tangible, like water and gas. Bandwidth availability is constant. There is *always* a specific amount of bandwidth available whether it's being used or not. You have the exact same access to it that I do if you're using the same ISP.

The unsustainable part of the Cable Company's system is not that people overtax their systems. It's that they oversell their bandwidth. They allow 50 people to have 20mbps access to a 100mbps link. The cable companies technically lie to all of their customers by saying that they have 20mbps. In truth, each person is really paying for a 2mbps connection. However, because not every one of these people will use all of this bandwidth at the same time, they are able to get away with this technical lie. In addition, they utilize that 100mbpb link to send digital TV and digital phone signals. Interestingly enough, someone watching an HDTV broadcast uses almost as much bandwidth as someone running a torrent. An hour of HDTV is the rough equivalent of 2GB of data. Around 5mbps for an hour of television.

But if you really want bandwidth caps, do this. I've lived in a location that has these caps. The lowest price access (30 dollars a month) allowed 5GB of bandwidth per month before charges of 10 dollars per gig kicked in. I'd like you to figure out exactly how much bandwidth you use on average and, using that price model, figure out how much you'd be paying each month. Using the example of HDTV, you'd be able to watch about 2.5 hours of HDTV before it started costing you 20 dollars an hour.

Do you use Youtube? Did you know that Youtube is one of the largest bandwidth hogs in the world now? IT departments everywhere have to block it or they end up with their network links being saturated the point of standstill.

And ISPs don't buy bandwidth unless they are leeching off of a bigger provider's network. Even in those situations they pay for unlimited use of a set speed.

But here's the question. What are the acceptable bandwidth limits for a tiered system? How about pricing? Is it fair to charge someone who pays for 5gb a month and goes 5gb over twice as much as the person who pays for 10gb a month that stays in their limit? They're both using the same amount of bandwidth.

Then there's another issue. What about businesses? One of the fastest growing industries right now is online backup. Most businesses have several GB of data that needs to be backed up every day. Should they have to pay the ISP 1,000 dollars a month to use this service? Don't you think that would stunt the growth of that industry?

No. The problem with Cable companies is that they refuse to be honest with their customers about how much bandwidth is really available to them. They have to compete with DSL and Fiber, but they aren't able to do it with the technology they've locked themselves into. They used a cheap hub and spoke topology to get their service into peoples' homes and now it's biting them in the ass because it can't handle the growth of the Internet.

Seriously, if you don't want to "subsidize" the downloading habits of someone else, go get a DSL connection and STFU.


RE: Finally!
By JediJeb on 6/22/2009 3:38:53 PM , Rating: 2
Has anyone tried to sue them for false advertising on Unlimited plans actually having limits? If Cheerios had to remover the 4% in 6 weeks statement on their boxes I imagine the same could be done for ISPs. I wonder what would happen if they were to lose a class action suit over charging for overages on an unlimited plan? Maybe having to refund all the overage charges would change their minds.


RE: Finally!
By michael67 on 6/23/2009 12:30:38 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
There's nothing wrong with caps and metered pricing per se.


For shore there is something wrong whit it, why do you think Google still keeps YouTube, because its a real nice portal for paid series and films in the near future.

Ore for example Netflix has a streaming service, here is estimated breakdown of the cost.
http://blog.streamingmedia.com/the_business_of_onl...

Only, ISPs don't want it because they wane cash in on that same marked, and by putting up data caps and so, they make it impossible for new company's to start up a service like that.

This article from Arstechnica is a must read if you wane know why ISPs are trying to force data caps on you
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/05/is...

2 more links to excellent critical articles on Ars
http://www.google.com/search?q=site:arstechnica.co...
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=site%3Aarstec...

Also here you find lots of useful info http://stopthecap.com/

We here in The Netherlands have no data caps on any of our broadband options
prices are also reasonable 10 euro for 1.5/0.25Mb till 70 euro for 120/10Mb
These are the prices for about 90% national coverage http://www.internetten.nl/access/adslprijzen_verge...
Some local speeds can be mouths higher whit some project giving 200Mbit up and down a they are laying true the hole of Amsterdam Gbit fiber


RE: Finally!
By raphd on 6/22/2009 1:36:36 PM , Rating: 2
this is kind of unrelated, but I just had a customer come back from Mexico. When he got home he was greeted with a $109,000 bill since he decided to use his iphone as a modem. If this passes, I hope it comes here to Canada soon.


RE: Finally!
By Tsuwamono on 6/23/2009 12:42:40 AM , Rating: 2
ROFL. Let me guess? Rogers? lol. my buddy got a 1,199$ bill from them for services hes supposed to have for free. It even said so on the print off he got.


RE: Finally!
By wifiwolf on 6/22/2009 8:27:25 PM , Rating: 2
This congressman's word has no value until Americans realize what's happening. United states is one of the least advanced countries on internet bandwidth and traffic available. I've got my internet plan at 24Mbs for 20€->25USD, next few months in the city I live in there will be a 100Mb down / 5Mb up for 60€ ->80$, including cable tv with all channels and unlimited phone calls. This is Portugal, one of the least developed EU countries, Netherlands, France and others has it for much longer. We have more than 6 ISPs all over the country with almost full coverage (only some villages don't have and some do).
Well, something s really wrong since there that is the country which invented the internet.


RE: Finally!
By Belard on 6/23/2009 5:04:07 AM , Rating: 2
Thats because there are many stupid people in the USA.


RE: Finally!
By antimatter3009 on 6/22/2009 10:14:12 AM , Rating: 5
I agree with your sentiment, but I don't think banning data caps is the right way to go about things. There's a high chance of unintended consequences when a non-technical person tries to write a law to govern the internet. What I'd rather see is just a law that will somehow improve competition. Competition would solve most other issues rather quickly. IMO, the ideal setup would be gov't owned lines that are leased to anyone who wants to be a provider. I don't foresee it ever happening in this country (OMG socialism!!!), but maybe some other approach to increasing competition could prove effective and tenable.


RE: Finally!
By kilkennycat on 6/22/2009 11:11:39 AM , Rating: 5
quote:
There's a high chance of unintended consequences when a non-technical person tries to write a law to govern the internet.


This "non-technical" quy is smarter than you give him credit. He has written a law that expands current FCC authority to removing any bandwidth caps, should they judge such action to be in the public interest. This places the decision firmly in the hands of the techno-political experts. The bill in itself does not remove bandwidth caps.


RE: Finally!
By mattclary on 6/22/2009 2:26:56 PM , Rating: 2
The decision should be in the hand of consumers, not politicians. Give us real competition and it works itself out.

You start passing laws about what ISPs can and can not do, you make it a lot more complex than it needs to be.


RE: Finally!
By TSS on 6/22/2009 10:16:20 PM , Rating: 4
i hate calling upon wikipedia as a source but it's late and i really should be getting to bed so for easy reference:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_Ac...

"Most media ownership regulations were eliminated."

"The Act was claimed to foster competition. Instead, it continued the historic industry consolidation begun by Reagan, whose actions reduced the number of major media companies from around 50 in 1983 to 10 in 1996[6] and 6 in 2005"

the decisions have always been in the hand of consumers. you voted him into office. same with bush (twice!) and obama.

if you wanted politics to stay out of this you should've voted for the minimalist government guy.

btw, i don't think there's anything like deregulation. the government can decide to turn a blind eye but then it's regulated that the government doesn't regulate it, but the company's (and thus conflicting interests) do. in essence, it's not de-regulation, but the wrong regulation.


RE: Finally!
By Hyperion1400 on 6/22/2009 3:22:52 PM , Rating: 1
Techno-political experts? You mean the guys who think the word "Dick" is too obscene or cable television are suddenly experts?


RE: Finally!
By jhb116 on 6/24/2009 9:05:47 PM , Rating: 2
This is the standard "regulation" knee jerk reaction. I believe the bill should include the following general provisions:

- 1st - stop all efforts from the ISP's to limit competition like the various legal efforts of Time Warner (and others) to prevent a city from offering a competitive service or preventing competition from moving into the area. This needs to be done at the national level to prevent abuse/lobbying at the lower levels as is currently happening.
- 2nd - Force truthful advertisement of what we as customers are actually getting for service - ie unlimited means unlimited. If there is a data cap then state that clearly upfront and not in the fine print.

The gov't should always favor regulating for sake of promoting competition - which has failed miserably here in the USA with the cable companies. We have an opportunity to fix this because Verizon and AT&T are deploying new networks to compete with the cable companies. We need to make sure the cable companies don't block the deployment of these networks (and others) to promote competition. Pricing and unlimited plan offerings will follow.....


RE: Finally!
By wempa on 6/22/2009 1:05:00 PM , Rating: 1
Agreed. Townships should own the infrastructure and lease it out to multiple companies that provide the service. That would solve the problem much better.


RE: Finally!
By mattclary on 6/22/2009 1:52:59 PM , Rating: 2
six
6
VI
5+1
3+3


RE: Finally!
By Murloc on 6/22/2009 2:07:12 PM , Rating: 3
those who invented metered internet aren't tech guys, they are thieves.


RE: Finally!
By captainpierce on 6/23/2009 7:15:17 AM , Rating: 2
Tell me about it. We need competition. I don't know about gov't owned lines. That could be a sticky wicket situation (sorry socialism). Something does need to be done to give consumers more choice, though.

Let's see I'll go with Verizon or....never mind.


RE: Finally!
By Starcub on 6/22/2009 11:44:23 AM , Rating: 1
If I'm not mistaken, at least according to what has been reported in this article, the bill this guy is writing isn't going to help the general consumer one bit. He's looking to protect government and industry only -- that would be business as usual for pol's.


RE: Finally!
By Starcub on 6/23/2009 6:46:32 PM , Rating: 2
Now that I've read the actual bill, I've come to the conclusion that the person who crafted the article was deceptively wrong.

In the article he says:
quote:
In the bill Rep. Massa argues that broadband internet has become essential to the U.S.'s high tech leadership, being used for "agricultural, medical, educational, environmental, library, and nonprofit purposes."


However, the bill only states that the ISP's submitted plan:
quote:
assess the impact of such service tiers on the ability of residential consumers to access widely used Internet services, including uses for agricultural, medical, educational, environmental, library, and nonprofit purposes;


Thus in the bill, it is clear that the intended beneficiaries are residential consumers, and not high tech industry.

However, I suspect the statement I quoted from the bill is nothing more than deceptive salesmanship in itself. It won't matter what purpose the residential consumer uses their broadband connection for: "widely used internet services, including..." would cover everything, unless someone at the FTC interpreted differently...


RE: Finally!
By christojojo on 6/22/2009 11:48:47 AM , Rating: 3
Write your Congressman.


RE: Finally!
By captainpierce on 6/23/2009 12:55:13 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
Write your Congressman.


And try not to use the f word in every other sentence.


RE: Finally!
By BZDTemp on 6/22/2009 5:24:50 PM , Rating: 1
If you mean 768 Kb/s then it's bad! (768 KB = 8x768Kb = not so bad)

Even web pages are getting so data heavy that more and more bandwidth is needed. I often work from home and the runs one or more remote sessions over my 20/2 Mb/s.

Internet access needs to be cheap, fast and without limits. Anything else limits progress.


awesome
By JoshuaBuss on 6/22/2009 9:35:51 AM , Rating: 4
This guy gets my support. I had decent 768/768 SDSL service 10 YEARS AGO for $40 a month from a local ISP (who was also our telephone provider.. (there was no competition for internet access in the rurual area either). Today I spend $50 a month for 1.5mb/512 ADSL. If this isn't a sign of prices being too high, I don't know what is.




RE: awesome
By amanojaku on 6/22/09, Rating: 0
RE: awesome
By JoshuaBuss on 6/22/2009 10:51:53 AM , Rating: 3
Uhh.. you're totally failing to take into account the main point of my post...the insane amount of progress we've made in 10 years with regards to internet connection advancements, penetration of broadband equipment, and the fact that everything else in this industry is up a thousand-fold in performance while costing hundredths of what it used to.


RE: awesome
By amanojaku on 6/22/2009 12:04:20 PM , Rating: 1
Actually, I am. Unfortunately, your analysis is inaccurate. I'm an insider into datacenter spending and I can tell you that it hasn't gone down much per facility, despite the lower costs of gear. Why? Because infrastructure is seeing more use, both from users and management. In the past it was enough to give you a fat pipe to the 'net (routers and switches.) Then people learned how to DoS so protection had to go up (sniffers, analysis, IDS and rate limiters/QoS devices.) Soon people learned to intercept traffic and insert malicious data, so more protection had to go up (anti-virus, attachment scanners, etc...)

As to "everything else in this industry is up a thousand-fold in performance while costing hundredths of what it used to" I dare you to name one thing. Hard drives? RAM? CPUs? Optical interconnects? Wireless? LCDs? If you held up cars to that standard, which isn't even being met by the components above, we'd all be driving 10K HP with 0-60 in .002 seconds!


RE: awesome
By christojojo on 6/22/2009 12:33:53 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
I dare you to name one thing. Hard drives? RAM? CPUs? Optical interconnects? Wireless? LCDs?


The trick here I guess is the phrase "one thing." My first PC was a Win 95, Pentium 120, 1.6Gb. 125 Ram, and 18.8 modem no Graphics card, lousy sound, good speakers (I still use them in the garage), and a Huge 15" monitor to play Command and Conquer.

Today, the last Computer I bought is a laptop for my son. It has a " Intel Core 2 Duo T5550 1.83GHz, 802.11a/b/g WLAN, 3GB DDR2, 320GB HDD, Blu-Ray/DVDRW, 17" WXGA+, Integrated Webcam, Windows Vista Home Premium" quoted from Tigerdirect.

So does this qualify? I have one item with multiple things that have gone down in price, Hard Drive, Ram, Graphics, CPU, the Laptop, the monitor, oh and newer technology the Blue Ray.

In the tech industry computers and its related tech performance has gone up the cost of that performance has gone down.

Yes, new headaches go with it but there is no way I can figure out how preventing competition and capping data are justified by increasing and "New costs".

Sounds like a shell game to me.


RE: awesome
By christojojo on 6/22/2009 12:35:26 PM , Rating: 2
Dang I reread it and I still didn't see that I forgot to put the first PC's Purchase price of 2,798.53 (tax included).


RE: awesome
By Oregonian2 on 6/22/2009 3:13:51 PM , Rating: 2
Internet service also is based upon digging ditches in the ground, running wire or fiber through it, keeping rain out of that wire, fixing remote electronics (dslams, repeaters, concentrators) by driving a truck out to the site and having a person fix it, etc.

One's internet service's speed has more to do with that last-mile in a ditch than it probably does the infrastructure behind it (backbone bandwidth charges, routers).

There probably has been less advancement in ditch digging and getting signals across a copper pair that's in it than there has been advancement in other things mentioned. Sure there are fancier (spendier) machines to dig ditches with, but still not the thousand times productivity improvement that some other things have.

Verizon dropped (at great expense) fiber to my home (FiOS). They thought so highly of it, they're abandoning it and the entire Oregon/Washington states and all the FiOS in it. On to Frontier and their DSL.

Just before getting FiOS installed, the DSL that I had for ten years had dropped in price by half -- but all at the same speed. About the same gain that the person a few levels above got. Didn't get better until Optical fiber got installed, because last-mile dSL is STILL ancient technology at work with a major upgrade requiring ditch-digging (or underground mole-emulations), better but not super-high tech (the last mile itself). If they could just run some new software and turn copper pairs into GPON fiber, it'd be great, but that's still being worked on.


RE: awesome
By esandrs on 6/22/2009 1:45:25 PM , Rating: 4
quote:
As to "everything else in this industry is up a thousand-fold in performance while costing hundredths of what it used to" I dare you to name one thing. Hard drives? RAM? CPUs? Optical interconnects? Wireless? LCDs? If you held up cars to that standard, which isn't even being met by the components above, we'd all be driving 10K HP with 0-60 in .002 seconds!


I'm not the original poster - but you do know it's called a hyperbole, right? An exaggeration for effect?

Everyone knows tech is better, faster, and cheaper over time. For home internet bandwidth to not follow this trend while all other computer tech does is absurd and points to one thing - profit.

Hard drives:
1999 -- Fujitsu UDMA 17.3Gb = $369 ($21.32/Gb), 33Mb/sec transfer

2009 -- WD SATA 2000Gb = $239 (0.12/Gb), 3.0Gb/sec transfer

1/175th the cost per Gb, 90 times the interface transfer speed

CPU:
1999 -- 500MHz Single-core Penitum III, 9.5M transistors, 400 MT/sec FSB

2009 -- 2.66GHz Quad-core Core i7, 781M transistors, 6400 MT/sec FSB

80 times the transistor count, 16 times the FSB

Internet Backbone
1990's -- T1 and T3 circuits (1.5Mbit/s to 45Mbit/sec)

2001 total Internet traffic estimate = 85 Pb/month (Petabytes)

2000's -- OC-768 circuits (38Gbit/sec)

2006 total Internet traffic estimate = 2000 Pb/month

There are industry reports available if you go look. Their conclusions are not shocking -- exponentially increasing usage with linear increases in investment leads to short-term high utilization levels and profits and long-term network pain as ISPs complain they can't provide any more service without more $$$$.


RE: awesome
By gamerk2 on 6/22/2009 1:54:07 PM , Rating: 2
Except that costs have FALLEN over the past few years for ISP's.

The cap's aren't about costs, its about profit. If you can't sustain all your suscribers using bandwith, either upgrade your network, or lower speeds to compensate. Instead, they choose to gouge their customers, and I for one will not allow this to happen.

Also remember, by killing bandwith, they kill streaming video, which benifits them, as all these ISP's have cable options...


RE: awesome
By Oregonian2 on 6/22/2009 4:19:00 PM , Rating: 2
Verizon made a different choice. They've decided to abandon Oregon, Washington, Indiana I think it was, plus a lot of other areas. FiOS and all being abandoned.


RE: awesome
By dragonbif on 6/22/2009 3:19:59 PM , Rating: 2
It is true that he is not. I am on DSL with Verizon and I get 7.1Gb down and 786Mb up for $48 a month (without tax) but there are 2 other DSL providers in town.


RE: awesome
By dragonbif on 6/22/2009 8:10:34 PM , Rating: 2
HAHAHAHA did I put down 7.1Gb down and 786Mb up?!!! Sorry it should be 7.1Mbps down and 786Kbps up. Please dont hate me I am only a PC errrr human ;)


RE: awesome
By wifiwolf on 6/22/2009 8:43:23 PM , Rating: 2
10 years ago I had 128kbit down 64bit up for the price i hace today 24mbit down and 1mbit up 20€. Eyes wide shut...


RE: awesome
By Screwballl on 6/22/2009 10:04:13 AM , Rating: 2
You are pretty much right there with a majority of the US.

$50 for 1.5Mb DSL or $50 for 8Mb Cable.

I pay $45 a month for 10-12Mb cable in this small town through Cox... of course now that there have been some pricing deregulation in he high speed ISP arena, many of us across the US can expect to start seeing major price increases over the next year... I know they have already raised mine $10/mo in the past year which is not too bad, but I will hate to see any more price increases, or I will have to step down to their 3Mb service at $35 a month...

Since I have Cox we do not have caps (at least not in my market) and I hope they keep it that way.


RE: awesome
By Stacey Melissa on 6/22/2009 10:18:28 AM , Rating: 3
Actually, Cox does have caps, and they're as horrible as what Time Warner recently got blasted for even considering implementing.

http://ww2.cox.com//aboutus/policies/limitations.c...

You and I have the same $45 plan, and we get 40GB down and 15GB up per month.


RE: awesome
By Screwballl on 6/22/2009 10:52:38 AM , Rating: 2
quote:
Actually, Cox does have caps...


Actually, no they do not... they only have caps in very specific and limited areas of their service. So far I have only heard of caps in Las Vegas and Virginia so far (they may have it a few other areas but it is NOT a nationwide cap).

They do not have any caps in my region: I know this because 1) a friend of mine works for them locally, and 2) I work for a small ISP that contracts through Cox for some cable connections.

You forgot to read this line on the page you linked:

quote:
Packages vary by region...


Another reason I know is that there have been months or several months in a row that I used around 60-80GB worth of downloads (100GB if you include the upload as well) and I never received a notice, a call or anything else.


RE: awesome
By Stacey Melissa on 6/22/2009 1:39:42 PM , Rating: 2
It's likely that Cox just doesn't enforce the caps, except for in egregious cases, where they can point to their policy for justification of whatever retribution they take. That doesn't mean they won't strictly enforce the caps in the future, though.

And even if you're right about regional-only caps, that's still just as bad as what Time Warner tried to pull with Beaumont and Rochester.

I did read the entire page, and my understanding is that package lineup and speeds vary by region. E.g., our Preferred Package is listed as "8, 9 or 10 megabit" download, depending on location. And some packages, such as the "Ultimate Package" are only available in certain markets.

My experience with Cox techs is that if you ask two techs about a policy, you'll get two different stories. So I tend to take what they say with a grain of salt.


RE: awesome
By Hyperion1400 on 6/22/2009 3:38:10 PM , Rating: 2
I had no idea DSL sucked so much in other areas of the country until I read the comments to this article. In my area(South Alabama) I get 8Mb/768Kb DSL for $30 a month(Plus the ludicrous taxes). The only other competitor is Mediacom who offers an intro package of 12Mb/515Kb for $30 a month for 3 months(which promptly jumps to $50 a month), and I defy you to get anything close 12Mb down during any reasonable hour of the day on cable.(Been there, done that)


RE: awesome
By LRonaldHubbs on 6/22/2009 3:42:10 PM , Rating: 2
Around here 6Mb DSL is $35/month, 12Mb DSL is $50/month, and there is no data cap. It's kind of suprising not only that I can get the service, but also that it is reasonably priced, considering that I'm in a pretty rural area. No idea how the cable service compares around here -- I haven't looked into it because we have Comcast here and I have no intention of supporting them.


My HERO!!
By ElementZero on 6/22/2009 9:35:39 AM , Rating: 5
This man deserves a medal. Hell - this goes through I'll put a framed picture of him on my desk...and I'm not even a New York citizen!




RE: My HERO!!
By TomZ on 6/22/09, Rating: 0
RE: My HERO!!
By mfed3 on 6/22/2009 11:37:07 AM , Rating: 1
WTF is with TomZ and antimatter using the exact wording of "unintended consequences" to refute the congressman's bill.

Paid posting / trolling perhaps?


RE: My HERO!!
By TomZ on 6/22/09, Rating: 0
RE: My HERO!!
By Hyperion1400 on 6/22/2009 3:42:53 PM , Rating: 2
Perhaps you should try showing some tact?


RE: My HERO!!
By TomZ on 6/22/09, Rating: 0
RE: My HERO!!
By Hyperion1400 on 6/22/2009 10:52:37 PM , Rating: 2
AHAHAhAh!

Must be a new guy. I could NEVER picture you being PC.


some issues
By Astral Abyss on 6/22/2009 2:00:30 PM , Rating: 2
I can understand limiting bandwidth in certain situations, but as it stands now, the wording and policies are very vague.

Here's a couple issues I have:

The cable companies do not provide any place to find out how much data you've downloaded and uploaded so you have no idea how close to your limit you are, unlike phone companies that track usage on their websites and list your calls so you can see where your time went.

Cable companies can't even guarantee a set amount of bandwidth. Every day between 6-8pm, worse on weekends, my brother can expect drop outs and bandwidth under 100Kbps, on his cable line with 10Gbps max downloads. If implementing data caps is supposedly done to improve performance, then I should at least expect a MINIMAL level of guaranteed service.

Otherwise, all I see is that the cable companies want to be able to oversell yet not be responsible for the poor service they offer in many areas, including mine.




RE: some issues
By Astral Abyss on 6/22/2009 2:02:08 PM , Rating: 2
Sorry, meant 10Mbps, wow, I wish it was 10Gbps


RE: some issues
By dragonbif on 6/22/2009 8:07:42 PM , Rating: 2
cable is on a shared network with all the other people in your part of the area. They could have as many as 1000 house holds on the 10Mbps network. So ya it can get slow.


Grat...
By Bender 123 on 6/22/2009 9:34:57 AM , Rating: 2
Once again a government solution to a problem the government made. How about we get rid of monopolies in cable/internet service and see who gets the customers? Or, if you are into the view of internet being a utility, have cities begin managing services, like that town in South Carolina, that was in the news a few weeks ago?




By Marlin1975 on 6/22/2009 11:17:54 AM , Rating: 2
Then you need to write your congressman/senator. Heck link to this story and tell them this is important to you.
1 Congressman will not get this bill through. So go to your representatives site and e-mail/write/call them.

Make sure you tell them you are from their district and are a registered voter.




whats his address?
By tastyratz on 6/22/2009 11:33:54 AM , Rating: 2
So I can send him flowers.




Write Your Congressman
By clovell on 6/22/2009 1:11:25 PM , Rating: 2
The bill is H.R. 2902. Read the bill here:

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c111:H.R.290...

Then, write your congressmen a hand-written letter.




Internet Effigy
By scrapsma54 on 6/22/2009 1:14:06 PM , Rating: 2
Baha, More like Internet Hero.
He has people.
Democracy 1 - politics 0

The problem these days is that we have people tell people they can't, even bigger problem is they will most likely listen.




See what happens?
By gamerk2 on 6/22/2009 1:29:46 PM , Rating: 2
See what happense when you threaten your local representative?

You're welcome. :D




TWC wins we all lose.
By widcard on 6/22/2009 7:56:55 PM , Rating: 2
We'll just wait and see what you think when your $45.00 a month broad ban goes up to $120.00 a month.




Woot!
By tdktank59 on 6/22/09, Rating: 0
"There is a single light of science, and to brighten it anywhere is to brighten it everywhere." -- Isaac Asimov

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