Bandwidth Cap Analysis: Why Bandwidth Caps Are Robbery [ Edited ]

[sjb933]

We're in the era where greedy ISPs are starting to enforce arbitrary bandwidth caps, and unfortunately companies such as Comcast and AT&T are leading the pack.  Here's a dive into the current bandwidth caps, and why, in my opinion, they are blatant robbery.

I am a subscriber of the U-verse Max Turbo internet service (rated at 24Mbit down/3Mbit up), for a total of a theoretical max throughput of 27Mbit (the enforced bandwidth caps apply to downloads and uploads, so I will no longer make any differentiation between the two).  

27Mbit per sec. = 1,620Mbit per min. = 97,200Mbit per hour = 2,332,800 Mbit per day.  Converting that to bytes, you get 291,600 MB per day = 284.77 GB per day.  

The allocated MONTHLY bandwidth is 250GB, and at 100% usage, it is theoretically possible to use 114% of your monthly bandwidth allocation in a single 24 hour period.  So how bad could the damage get?  AT&T's current policy is that for every 50GB over the 250GB limit a customer goes, they will be charged an additional $10.

So, in your typical 30-day month, one could theoretically use ~284.77 GB per day, which over the course of 30 days is a total of 8,542.96 GB; a whopping 8,292.97 GB over the allocated limit.  At $10 per 50 GB, that would net a customer a surplus charge of $1,658.59 for using the bandwidth they're paying for by signing up for the highest speed option!

That is completely and utterly ridiculous.  What is the benefit of the speed if one cannot use it to it's potential?

This huge imbalance begs the question as to how much bandwidth one is actually allocated from the perspective of the cap.  This can be worked through similarly:

250GB/month = 2000Gbit/month  = 2,048,000 Mbit/month.  Again assuming 30 days in a month, a month consists of 2,592,000 seconds.  Thus 2,048,000Mbit / 2,592,000 seconds = 0.79Mbit/sec.  Keep in mind this <1Mbit/sec allocation encompasses both downloads AND uploads.

So, while I pay $63/month for my highest speed internet that should allocate me 27Mbit/sec, the imposed monthly bandwidth caps truly limit me to 0.79Mbit/sec of usage, a mere 2.9%.

This is blatantly absurd robbery, and while AT&T is certainly one of the bad guys leading this ISP paradigm shift, they're not the only company at fault.  This needs to change, they need to understand their customer base is NOT happy about such changes. 

[th3trout]

[Per Guidelines:  Keep it Relevant and Appropriate].

Many of us live in towns where there is only a single service provider, giving us no real option but to get hosed.

[rat9]

I agree with your analysis except that expecting 100% usage of the speed they sell you is a little unreasonable. All the ISP's VASTLY oversell the actual bandwidth they have. It is standard procedure to sell 100 customers on 10mbit internet and then join them all on a shared 100mbit pipe.  If the networks were actually capable of the full advertised capability 24/7 for everyone at the same time, a connection would cost way way more.  Understand that the max speed really is a burst speed that you might see sometimes.  If you look at the ISP fine print it usually says UP TO 24mbits.

This being said, the traffic limits are BULL. You are right, they really are robbing you. Even if you redo your calculation with an average of HALF the advertised burst speed, you are still getting screwed. Not getting the advertised speed is one thing, capping the total downloads this low is criminal.  I have two 60Mbit by 5Mbit charter cable connections in my house with two 680mhz DD-drwt gigabit routers and a dedicated server for downloading and a dedicated server for storage.  My data limit is 512 GB per month on a 60mbit connection. I tripled it one month easily. And yes I only have ONE CHOICE for internet.

I hope people start to understand how low these caps are and how sneeky the ISP's are getting.   

[jimgfitzgerald]

---

th3trout wrote:

[Per Guidelines:  Keep it Relevant and Appropriate].

Many of us live in towns where there is only a single service provider, giving us no real option but to get hosed.

---

Although, that is how our free enterprise system works.  A company is free to offer a product at a price.  Customers are free to buy it or not.  If they don't like the product or the price, they go to a competitor.  [Per Guidelines:  Keep it Relevant and Appropriate].

[bryanj]

"A company is free to offer a product at a price.  Customers are free to buy it or not."

I agree with this statement, but its not even about that anymore. For me, its the ridiculous deception by companies and they're marketing departments. How can we trick the consumers? Fine print, bandwidth caps, implying things yet using loose wording, etc. Consumers need to be smart, sure. But completely paranoid about every offer or deal, etc?! No one ever gets what they pay for anymore, and as consumers its frustrating as it gets! What happened to companies you could trust?

[palegin]

Except this system breaks down when you combine 1) a product being nearly a necessity for living in our modern world (like, say, electricity or the internet) and 2) a single company having a monopoly over said necessity. At that point, the system breaks down and the provider can charge whatever it wants because it knows the customer will have to pay it.

That's what happening with AT&T (and other telecommunications companies).

[acrackin]

more importantly......look at all the streaming services and download updates that companies are pushing out.  whether it be google music, icloud, etc...and then add in the fact OSX lion is a download only update, or the countless updates you need to download just to have windows up to date.  keeping your computer up to date is now costing you monthly bandwith.  awesome. 

better yet, i personally have an iphone...and i bought the 200mb data package, because most of my heavy usage with it is when i am sitting on my own couch, bored as can be, and using my uverse wifi.  now not only do i have a data cap on 3G but my wifi data is also adding against my monthly cap.  that's awesome, my fault for buying ATT products across the board. 

the data caps are total crap.  the US as whole is light years behind in the global broadband market, and it's because of price guaging garbage like this.  the rest of the internet world is moving toward utilizing everything with an internet connection.  a connection you now have to be worried about using. 

[sjb933]

As already noted by the previous person, not everyone has options like that.  Choosing a new telco isn't as easy as getting a different car or going to a different restaurant, etc... In MOST cases, people have the option of only 1 or 2 Telcos (foregoing satallite options).

[sjb933]

Yes, I realize expecting 100% is unrealistic.  But only being provided 2.9% is a little ludicrous.  If bandwidth caps AT LEAST scaled with the tier or internet you purchase, that'd be good.

My biggest grief right now is how disproportionate the 250GB data cap is to the 27Mbit connection. 

[jimgfitzgerald]

I still think comparing the U-Verse (yet to be implemented ) caps to a theoretical maximum throughput capacity is a meaningless exercise.  What is more meaningful is how much capacity does an average customer use/need.  I think the purpose of caps is to prevent "data hogs" from using a disproportionate amount of data and limiting AT&T's ability to maximize their profits by adding more "average use" customers.  You may not like that, but that's their perogative as a "for profit" business.  The argument that there are no other customer choices available is not AT&T's problem.  When people choose where to live, they make that choice in light of the pros and cons of living there.  I would love to have a pier, boat house, and boat docked in my back yard, but the nearest lake is 25 miles away.

[gneen]

sjb933 writes:  The allocated MONTHLY bandwidth is 250GB, and at 100% usage, it is theoretically possible to use 114% of your monthly bandwidth allocation in a single 24 hour period.

The operative word being "theoretically" ...

The average size of a 2-hour  DVD MPEG-2 Movie recorded with size 720x526 Dolby Digital is about 4.21 GB ...  so I can watch about 60 movies a month and about use up my cap.

The average size of a 3:30 minute MP3 file recorded with a quality of 128kbps, 44Khz is about 3.3Mb ... so I can listen to about 75,000 tunes in a month ... except that there isn't that much time in the month.

If I like to read (does anyone do that any more?) I cound get a couple hundred million pages to sate my appetite.

Now, I'll admit that full def HD movies (at about 40 GB per) might begin to push  the monthly limits so you may want to hop in the car and buy a ticket if you can't miss the new releases ... and they still can't transmit that glorious popcorn smell no matter what the bandwidth.

Is it resonable to limit usage to a bound that affects only the heaviest users in order to provide bandwidth to the masses at reasonable cost?     ...  you can probably guess what my personal answer would be!

Ref: http://www.unitarium.com/data 

=Gneen

[RCSMG ACE - Master]

Service providers will either institue caps or throttle back usage.  Like it or not it is a money issue, and the providers are very interested in making as much as possible.  Its all a part of that "Supply and Demand" system that the service providers operate by.  Whether it is righ or wrong I will leave it up to all of you good people to discuss.

[jimgfitzgerald]

That's how capitalism works.  Of course capitalism is not perfect, and has it's own intrinsic problems, that is our system.

[bwalker5]

I work from home and don't have pay-tv. so in my case, AT&T has absolutely suprise-screwed me. I can't believe they never notified me until I went over it.

[texasguy37 ACE - Champion]

---

bwalker5 wrote:

I work from home and don't have pay-tv. so in my case, AT&T has absolutely suprise-screwed me. I can't believe they never notified me until I went over it.

---

Do you have AT&T U-verse internet or AT&T DSL internet?

[girolamous]

OK, even with my Pro DSL connection I have no problem going over the limit--not since my family discovered Netflix on line.  Regular def TV for 5 hours a day does it when added to the other downloads that go on.  So I've searched all over ATT's mess of a web site as well as talked to my account manager to find out where I can monitor usage.  They tell me only that I will be notified by email when I am at 80, then 95% of the cap.  Gee, I guess that is a step, but I want to know what sites are responsible for the top 10 usage, so I can monitor them in the router...why not make that information available on my account page, or if I request it?

[texasguy37 ACE - Champion]

---

girolamous wrote:

OK, even with my Pro DSL connection I have no problem going over the limit--not since my family discovered Netflix on line.  Regular def TV for 5 hours a day does it when added to the other downloads that go on.  So I've searched all over ATT's mess of a web site as well as talked to my account manager to find out where I can monitor usage.  They tell me only that I will be notified by email when I am at 80, then 95% of the cap.  Gee, I guess that is a step, but I want to know what sites are responsible for the top 10 usage, so I can monitor them in the router...why not make that information available on my account page, or if I request it?

---

Do you have U-verse internet?

[zippy75]

I own an ISP that serves approximately 2,000 customers. I have no doubt that those of you who blame the "greedy" ISPs for bandwidth caps would feel differently if you were in our shoes. Imagine that you owned a restaurant that offered an "all you can eat" buffet, You would probably base your prices on knowing about how much the average person will eat. If suddenly everyone shows up and eats enough for ten people, guess what? You're going broke unless you raise your prices or put a stop to it. 250 GB per month is very generous. Much more than I would be if I were calling the shots at AT&T. Why? Because one bandwidth hog uses as much bandwidth as 20 normal customers. So he's paying $63 per month... poor baby!!! At the $36.95 per month we charge I'd just as soon fire the guy and put twenty "normal" customers in his place who would pay me a total of $739 per month. In our case though, it's actually not so much about the money as that we have to slow the normal customers down to make sure we have enough capacity for the bandwidth hogs. So, why don't we just add more capacity? Well we do, but as a wireless provider we're limited by the amount of spectrum the FCC makes available to us. It's a limited resource, More bandwidth requires more spectrum. That's where the money comes in. This is a business right? I'm going to run out of spectrum sooner or later. So I have to choose between 100 bandwidth hogs paying a total of $6300 per month or 2000 normal customers paying $73,900 per month. Which would you chose? That's why I'm happy to send these guys to my competition. I'll even give them the phone number. I'm guessing that the guy who wrote this got rid of his cable TV service, maybe his telephone too, and is doing illegal peer-to-peer downloading rather than buying his music and his movies because he thinks he's going to get it all for free on the Internet now. Who's the greedy one here? Anyone who can't get by with 250GB per month needs a life.

[SomeJoe7777 ACE - Geek]

You're comparing apples and oranges.

1. You are a small ISP with 2000 customers. AT&T is not. Your bandwidth constraints are real, AT&T's are manufactured.

2. Wireless is physically limited by spectrum, transmit power, and towers. Bandwidth management is physically necessary. With wired landline-based bandwidth, it is not, the fiber has tons of unused bandwidth available.

3. 250GB is obviously overdoing it for wireless applications, but not at all for desktop applications. A single month of using Mozy or Carbonite backup service will easily cause almost anyone to exceed 250GB. Your argument that all those people need to "get a life" is insulting and undermines/cheapens your argument.

[JefferMC ACE - Wizard]

I agree with both of the last two posts, to a point.

While there is a lot of dark fiber to be harvested, that's not the only issue.  There's also the costs of the hardware at each end, the increased management, etc.  Yeah, I think the big ISP's are crying "poor me" when the problem isn't as bad as they make it out to be. But, it does remain that they're equipping and provisioning for subscribers times average use, and a few subscribers are bending the average use up, and economic pressures are making it hard for them to raise the price.  The large ISP has the same business model as the small one, just better economies of scale.

I, too, despise limited and/or measured bandwidth plans because its too hard to make sure your usage fits within the limits and you have to trust the meter (and I agree with the masses that it's hard to trust the ISP on that score).  I just think that both sides seem to think that the other's arguments have no merit at all, and that this is an untrue statement.

[Yoshieb]

I can empathize with the need for bandwidth caps. Every bit of data transferred is going to put additional strain on their servers. In order to keep everyone's maximum speeds running (allegedly) at optimum efficiency, they need to keep people from arbitrarily leaving streams running simply because there's "unlimited internets" from their perspective.

Now I'm not a fan of AT&T's service overall. With every location I've moved to, every modem I've been sent, and every "repair" that's been made to my connection, problems have popped up. I rarely get the speed I pay for, my internet connection often drops out entirely (with no downloads or streams running whatsoever), and even if an outside factor causes these or other issues, it's AT&T's responsibility to correct their mistakes and prevent them from occurring in the future. I believe they often fail to do so in a timely manner, and if they were providing any other kind of service, their business would have gone under long ago.

The above tangent has a purpose, so bear with me if you will. As someone said in an earlier post, as technology progresses, the 150GB cap will become obsolete. I believe this is already the case, but I also understand that times are tough and they can't simply upgrade all of their servers on a whim. I also know that in most places, it seems people simply have no choice but to go with AT&T due to not having any other available options short of Satellite internet. However, if there is a market, competition will arise, and the more AT&T pushes its customers away, the more saturated this market is going to become.

Eventually, the fruit of the "discontent AT&T customers" tree will become so ripe that another company such as Comcast, CableOne, Charter, etc. will finally decide it's worth running their wires out to our homes and begin plucking AT&T's "loyal customers" one by one, most likely at an ever-increasing rate.

So why, then, introduce new limitations on your already lackluster service, and then proceed to only punish us if we go over your limit? Everyone needs to make a buck to stay afloat, but the money you gain from a few overages is a short-term reward, while losing your customers is a long-term mistake.

Why not "reward" your loving and ever-faithful customers with discounts on their following bills, dependent on how much below their bandwidth limit they are? Why not provide "rollover" bandwidth the same as rollover minutes with your phone service? The little pamphlet claims that only 2% of users will be affected, but in all honesty, if this were the case, would their bandwidth use be so massive as to cripple your servers? Are these people downloading 250 GB per day, as the original poster implied was possible? If the numbers are far greater than 2%, as many of us appear to suspect, then a reward system would be warranted, and would ultimately net you more gains than what you would simply receive for charging for overages.

And, of course, if it trulyis only 2% of your customer base, then punish only these special few then. Instead of charging anyone who goes over 150GB, charge the people who pass 5 TBs in a month, with ample warning of course. Surely if they're forcing massive loads on your servers, then they're going well beyond 150GB.

There are so many other options than the old "if one student speaks out, the whole class gets punished" approach. For the sake of your company's own welfare, think before you act, because if things don't change, I'm beginning to think it's worth moving again simply to get better service.

[Yoshieb]

You know, I got so caught up in reading the discussion about this that I completely forgot the reason I registered to post here.

The Bandwidth checking page has been up for roughly a year, and has never functioned.

It's safe to say that not everyone wants to wait around for a mysterious email to arrive warning you that you reach your limit. It's also probable that most people who use up vast amounts of bandwidth on the net are irresponsible youths listening to rock and roll and staying out past 10. The primary bandwidth users aren't likely to be the ones paying the bills in most cases, so give us an option to keep tabs on how far in we are.

You might find that if people can actually see how much they're using on a daily basis, they're more inclined to limit their use as a whole. Unless, of course, you simply want to keep your customers ignorant until it's the eleventh hour. I don't think our trusted friends at AT&T would ever attempt something so devious, so perhaps it's time to make our favorite bandwidth checking page functional.

Also, I'm sorry about all the hurtful things I said in the last post. I just get so angry sometimes baby, you know I love you.

[texasguy37 ACE - Champion]

---

Yoshieb wrote:

Eventually, the fruit of the "discontent AT&T customers" tree will become so ripe that another company such as Comcast, CableOne, Charter, etc. will finally decide it's worth running their wires out to our homes and begin plucking AT&T's "loyal customers" one by one, most likely at an ever-increasing rate.

---

The ISP's the mentioned above also have bandwidth caps written into their terms of service agreements.  They may or may not be enforcing those caps.

Also, the proposed 150 GB/month bandwidth cap applies to AT&T DSL internet customers.  The proposed bandwidth caps for U-verse internet customers is 250 GB/month.  This is the U-verse customer forum.  If you have DSL internet service, you should be posting on the Internet Forum.

[Yoshieb]

Replace all instances of 150GB in my above posts with 250GB when reading it then, since the statements apply to both.

As for the other companies having caps, the problem isn't ultimately the cap alone, but that AT&T is coupling their cap with mediocre service, although I was simply listing the first company names that came to mind.

Let's roll with those three, though.

A quick skim of the internet yields that both CableOne and Comcast have implemented a way for people to check how much of their caps they've used. They appear to have tried multiple systems, ranging from tracking bandwidth per day and limiting your total speed dependent on this until the next day, limiting your speed the following month, tracking only during peak hours, and so on.

My argument wasn't that the cap itself was going to make AT&T customers flee to a more attentive lover who doesn't mind if you want unlimited bandwidth and maybe some cuddling every night, but rather that if they're not willing to adapt, the competition is going to begin finding it worthwhile to move in and sweep us off our feet.

[texasguy37 ACE - Champion]

---

Yoshieb wrote:

Replace all instances of 150GB in my above posts with 250GB when reading it then, since the statements apply to both. 

---

No, the same statements do not apply to both.  AT&T has not implemented bandwidth caps for U-verse internet service; however, bandwidth caps have been implemented for AT&T DSL internet service.  AT&T DSL users have access to a tool to track their usage.  Since no bandwidth caps have been implemented for U-verse internet, there is no no need to track usage.  

AT&T has indicated that if bandwidth caps are ever implemented for U-verse internet, a tool for tracking bandwidth usage would be made available prior to the implementation of such caps.  Your comments are much ado about nothing.

[Yoshieb]

Proposed or already implemented, the arguments remain the same.

As for the tool, it does not (and has never) functioned. I believe I already said this in an above post.

[xexyl]

"AT&T has indicated that if bandwidth caps are ever implemented for U-verse internet, a tool for tracking bandwidth usage would be made available prior to the implementation of such caps. Your comments are much ado about nothing."
Hence, your point shows reading comprehension issues (and we're all guilty of that to a certain extent, but when complaining about something its best to be well informed and make sure you read all details).
As for caps, and I'm on dsl 3Mbps line, so I can speak for the dsl: the tool does work there, which is also what the person was saying; that it IS implemented for dsl. Further, given I run a server 24/7, download a lot of things, and route other computers, I've never had an issue or even close, and over the past year (I know because my server's been up without reboot for about a year), I have:
RX bytes:148455312880 (138.2 GiB) TX bytes:55166037501 (51.3 GiB)
Okay, technically its not a year, it is:
05:08:16 up 318 days, 11:38, 2 users, load average: 0.05, 0.01, 0.00 (external interface). Maybe that's not a lot to you (but again I'm on a much slower connection), but do you actually have a way to monitor it ? If not, why complain ? Just a thought there: its not implemented, so who cares right now ? It'll work if they do implement, and then you'll either figure out how to avoid going over, or you won't. But unless you can say for sure how much you've transferred, how do you know you're even close to going over it ? I.e., why complain over something that is a non issue ?
I can't blame them for caps. Not that it is your fault, but bandwidth costs money. And in fact, many do abuse their network, say by a torrents. Are torrents illegal ? Well no. But if not configured to the best way, they can eat up bandwidth fast.
But then again, would you prefer the other option - traffic shaping ? I don't like caps per se either, but however, I understand it, given how bandwidth works.
Besides, you think that's bad? What about dedicated servers that have much smaller caps and much higher bandwidth (100 or 1000Mbps+!). It may not be fair, but that's how it goes some times. Nothing is free in this world, after all...

[gamegurou]

Technically hosting a server on your consumer U-verse account is against ToS, but I'm just throwing pebbles. =)

[xexyl]

I don't have uverse.
Edit: Besides which, define 'server'. There's more than one definition, including a normal machine hosting e.g., internal mail. I've also been told it is OK. And they can't prove it anyway. Just as a side note.

[oz_1 ACE - Wizard]

So far so good when it affects my day to day usage then I will have a decison to make and I am lucky in the fact I have several options but so far it works for me.