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[Royal☭]

AT&T to begin imposing caps and overage fees... on their landline customers starting March 18th.

[Smiler]

Oh fuck them. I have never gone over 150 gigs even downloading a ton of shit, but they still should go get fucked.

[Classic]

That almost seems reasonable.

There must be something I'm missing.

[Smiler]

The fact that before this it was unlimited?

[Smiler]

Also I am paying the same amount as I would be on a business line right now. Business lines are not capped either unlimited use or a higher monthly cap than the residential cap.

[Classic]

That's a bit terrible. Would you like to start a not-for-profit?

The fact that before this it was unlimited?

Network bandwidth is a finite resource. It was never actually unlimited?

Most ISPs offer(ed) unlimited access because with tens of thousands of users they're able to maintain networks for which no users could realistically find the cap.

We've known that the way the internet was being used and the kind of services it was supporting meant that some kind of change would be needed to keep ISPs profitable, and caps with overage fees are one of the ways people have talked about doing that. People have also talked about charging directly for specific services like hulu or youtube to help address this problem.

What I'm actually worried about is companies moving to smaller caps for smaller periods and colluding to steadily decrease the expectations of service for their client base. But the kind of talks that went on re: "Net Neutrality" a few years ago made me suspect that the big network owners would disembowel each other if given half the chance.

[Smiler]

I like how you assume I think that the internet comes out of the ether and costs nothing to provide to people. There are however more options than saying "Welp, we are all out of internet" and then cutting off the hose. ISPs always cite 2% of its users being "Heavy users", and the reality of it is that with new technologies that are becoming more mainstream the group of people who are using a lot of bandwidth is going to expand. ISPs offering packages for unlimited Netflix/Hulu use also rubs up against net neutrality concerns.

[Classic]

Sorry, I'm just not sure why you'd be surprised or upset with this unless you didn't know anything about the internet or hadn't read the article. Since the article was right there, I guessed (wrongly) that you'd read it.

They're not talking about shutting it off (though apparently that's the dick move they have been doing to manage the resource and the term capping certainly does imply that...) they're talking about charging overage fees ($10/50gigs/month) and making lofty promises about keeping their user base aware of their measured usage.

They also claim that their digital TV (Well, their U-Verse service, whatever that is?) bandwidth won't count against users.

I also don't think anyone's recommending ISPs offer packages for those services, but that the ISPs make those services pay for the burden of their clientele. The idea is then, that Hulu will charge you, and pay those charges to your ISP. Kind of like the way sales taxes work. Only more a pain in the ass to track.

[TA]

The fact that before this it was unlimited?

Network bandwidth is a finite resource. It was never actually unlimited?

The thing is, it's not a finite resource.  Wireless spectrum, yes, there is a limited amount of that that can be used for data transmission, and there is a saturation point.  But wired internet?  The only real limit is how many wires you lay, how many routers you plug in.  The issue is that AT&T wants to charge more to ration their existing infrastructure, as though the amount of data they can move was limited by anything but their profit margin, instead of investing in their wired network and continuing to provide unlimited data.

And as time goes forward, they're going to need to make those investments anyway.  Netflix HD streaming burns about a gig an hour.  The average person watches enough TV to burn through their monthly allotment with nothing but that, let alone the average family sharing a DSL connection.

This is a move to inflate their bottom line by putting the screw to their customers.  There is no need for it save a desire to squeeze out as much money as the market will bear.  Trying to pretend there is some driving need other than profit, or shifting the blame to those evil file-sharers, is just dishonest.  They're doing this because they can, not because they must, and convincing people like you that they have to is part of how they get away with doing it.

[Classic]

The only real limit is how many wires you lay, how many routers you plug in

So yes, there is a limit (and maybe some scalability issues, but... that's a talk for later) and you're right both in that it is the "obligation" of top tier network providers to invest in increasing those resources and that this change probably has more to do with feeding fat cats than it has to do with investing in keeping the infrastructure modern or anything that could be remotely described as "equitable".

Let's make no mistakes here, this is a reaction to the fact that the cream and honey era for ISPs, where they could charge exciting fees for services that the average consumer would never use, is coming to a close. Unlimited bandwidth offers were made by people who did not foresee the kinds of demands users would be making on networks in 2011 and this is a reaction to shrinking profit margins more than an explicit, projected need in the near future.

But everything I've read about these networks suggests that there is a looming "crisis point" for the internet as we know it, the model would need to change or become, horror of horrors, unprofitable.

It's a kick in the balls, but this is the scheme I thought of that might be even remotely equitable. I do understand (and it pisses me off) that company accounts are being subsidized at the expense of smaller clients, but encouraging people not to be monstrous douchebags is a problem way beyond my technical scope or ambitions.


You're right, but I remain convinced that there will be a legitimate need to change in the future.

I'd love to read articles that encourage me to be more pissed at fat-cats though. If you can find the links to the articles that informed your opinion that my belief is a product of AT&T's propaganda, I'd appreciate if you posted it (again?).

[Shinra]

The only scenario where infrastructure expansion becomes an issue is when we,ve turned the earth into a blame!-like superstructure and have no more room for fiber. Do you have any idea how cheap that shit is? Especially for a company like AT&T, which controls most of the backbones in this country. As someone who has worked in the corporate side of telecom, I assure you - AT&T is in no danger of running out of bandwidth, or becoming close to unprofitable, and unless you live in a fucking backwater I gaurantee you have MORE than enough bandwidth to go around to meet local business need if nothing else. This is greed, bottom line.

[Mongrel]

Two things:

1) You guys think you have it bad? Try being in Canada, where almost every major ISP has a cap under 50 Gb for most "regular" midrange internet plans and fees that amount to several dollars per extra Gb.

2) Well, if nothing else, the number of people who are soon to be fucked by the convergence of stingier ISPs and greedier* consumers ought to push Net Neutrality on the front burner of public debate. Now the regular folks will understand EXACTLY what the early adopters nerds have been complaining about for the past half-decade.

*Not really meant in a very pejorative way. It's just the best word to use here.

[Brentai]

The percentage of consumers impacted remains to be seen, but if it's much over that 2% of "heavy users" there's going to be a pretty good backlash.  Which would ultimately be the best thing for net neutrality of course.  Much better for this shit to be perceived as uneconomical than unfair.

[Thad]

I haven't exactly been threadsplit-happy lately, but the conflation of the "should there be bandwidth caps?" argument with "should there be net neutrality?" argument is problematic.  There's nothing wrong with being opposed to both of them, but they are completely separate issues; you can charge per byte and retain neutrality, so long as you charge the same for any one byte as any other.

I'm not opposed, in principle, to per-byte pricing.  I AM opposed, in principle, to non-neutral traffic prioritization.

Now, I'm opposed to per-byte pricing in PRACTICE simply because there is absolutely no free-market mechanism keeping prices reasonable (hi, Internet connection that just went down for 20 minutes for thousandth time since last November!  I'd quit paying for you, but the only other broadband provider in the area offers 1/12 the connection speed!), but I can see hypothetical situations in which it would be okay.  I can't see any hypothetical situation in which violating net neutrality is okay.

[Shinra]

The problem I have with bandwidth capping is it's just encouraging already bad behavior. It's not an exaggeration to say that the refusal of telecom companies to upgrade or replace existing infrastructure has cost consumers billions in increased costs and service interruptions, and this is just one more reason AT&T can put on the list of reasons they'll never upgrade their existing hardware. The central offices they're running all this fiber out of these days are pretty much built around decaying bell telephone company equipment, much of it jury-rigged over the years to support software and hardware many, many hardware generations ahead of it. And the process to get new circuits installed? I can't describe it in words. It takes months. You have to go through provisioning teams, implementation teams, if you have to operate on a clec or a rival rboc's turf it's even worse. If AT&T would spend the money to upgrade their infrastructure - from the ground up - they could streamline the circuit install process, eliminate a whole lot of redundancy and upgrade the available bandwidth for an area in days rather than months. On the money they'd save alone from all the extra manhours of work, they'd pay back the cost of the infrastructure upgrades.

[Misha]

I live in a household that gets dicked by this change, and it's still on average probably like 20-30 dollars more a month. That's not at all unreasonable as an extra charge considering we're getting infinitely more use out of our internet than most people, though I still think it would be better to just have a payment option for unlimited.

[Shinra]

For me it's mostly a matter of principle. The rates are a lot more reasonable than I would expect from AT&T, but honestly, there is an infinite amount of bandwidth to go around when it comes to fiber. The only real physical barrier to progress is in some parts of the country they can only install new circuits 7 months out of the year.

[JDigital]

BT Internet finally offers a 20Mbit line, but with a 300GB/month bandwidth cap (originally 200GB/month). You will go over this cap in two full days downloading at maximum speed. Thankfully they don't charge for overages, but they do limit your connection to 2Mbit for the next 30 days. Several people in this house share the connection, so we're pretty much permanently at 2Mbit. This is still four times faster than any other ISP: BT owns the lines so none of the other ISPs offer the faster ADSL yet.

[Shinra]

Cool of them not to charge overages, at least. And honestly, 2meg isn't that bad. Not technically 'broadband' at that point, but at least you can still browse the internets.

[Classic]

Shinra, you keep saying "fiber". And asking if I know how much that stuff costs. It occurs to me that I don't, could you tell me how much that stuff costs?