Charter Implements Internet Usage Caps

[tayb]

Claiming unlimited usage and then capping the usage is unbelievably outrageous.

How about I open a hot dog stand and advertise free hot dogs but charge $1.50 for them.

 

[Guest]

awwww man. now i'll have to curtail downloading HD content from ftvgirls. LOL!

 

[Caffeinecarl]

This kind of rubbish is exactly why I switched from Comcast to Wide Open West (WOW)! However, in comparison, I dare say that Comcast is much more lenient than Charter is. I had 6 Mbps service with a 250 GB/month cap. Now I have 8 Mbps service with no caps, and it's slightly less a month.

Just one consumer's point of view

 

[ThePatriot]

Wow! This really sucks!
I have a 60 Mbps for 50 euros and no caps.
And.... No Millenium Copy Act.

Yep, life is tough (in the States)

 

[Max-i-mus]

Well this is a show stopper for me folks.. We have 5 people in this house, and we all have our own sites and sounds of the net, going in some form or fashion... We all work different shifts, so there is always someone online.. This would mean no more Netflix, no more shoutcast, no more Youtube, or any of the other hundred or so web sites.. We rely on the net for most all our video and audio pleasure. TV.. what is that, oh, it is now the soap box... As Soaps are the only thing we all can tolerate commercials with... This is soon to change....

 

[justkevin7]

That it. This is the final straw. I'm leaving Charter and going DSL. I mean $60 for internet alone, and now you want to CAP it??? Screw you Charter, and good riddance.

 

[blackened144]

[citation][nom]tayb[/nom]Claiming unlimited usage and then capping the usage is unbelievably outrageous. How about I open a hot dog stand and advertise free hot dogs but charge $1.50 for them.[/citation]

"Free hot dogs" with a one bite cap.

 

[Guest]

Caps won't speed up the internet... an insane amount of available bandwidth sits idle all day every day. This is a huge step back. I find it ridiculous how these jackoff ISPs will sit there and market streaming HD content, music, etc and then pull this card out their asses. It's a travesty how they play the consumer so hard. It will cost more money to monitor and enforce their cap than it ever will to have unlimited. Sometimes the ISP will play the feelsorryforme card by saying that they are just passing on the charges they get from their higher tier providers. Well sure its true in some cases, but 99% of the time its bullcrap. When you score a 100mbit+ business connection you get unlimited bandwidth, even if you are an ISP. ISPs need to stop trying to nickel and dime the hell out of everyone and start actually pushing for more current technology so we don't become the 3rd world equivalent in infrastructure. We seem to be stuck in the past and squeeze everything we can out of copper and old slow crap tech. We are supposed to be the inventors, the innovators, not the stragglers!

 

[Sicundercover]

This is most definatly a step backwards.

Meanwhile companies like NetFlix are giving you the option to stream movies over the net to your 360. It wont be much longer before your streaming HD movies to your 360.

The real issue here is not the companies being able to handle the bandwidth usage, its that they do not want to spend the investment to upgrade the ISP to better suit the future usage of the net.

Honestly if your a modern PC user, you probably spend more time watching entertainment on you computer then your TV and this trend is growing.

As for changing providers. In the US you never have more then one cable option or phone provider in your area so you would also have to move as well.

Who are the real crooks here? I have an idea lets jack up the prices of entertainment during a massive recession when people have little else to do.

 

[eofu]

That makes me mad, ISP's are trying everything to make money, from net neturality to this. I agree with EnFoRceR22, if ISP's were not sitting around blowing their money they would have the funds for upgrading their infrastructure.

So after they get done capping our usage, how much longer before they charge our usage(per megabyte)?

 

[grifonik]

I really wish Charter would just stop the ARP flood packets... now that there's a limit, and I'm paying for their crappy network mistakes... I'd really like to call them and dispute the 8 billion packets they sent me that I didn't ask for last month.

(I wonder how that argument will go with their billing department?)

 

[randomizer]

[citation][nom]justkevin7[/nom]I mean $60 for internet alone, and now you want to CAP it???[/citation]
Welcome to the rest of the world, but with decent caps.

 

[sarahoneill]

Seems that Charter just wants people to buy the most expensive tier to lose the cap. There's an interesting article here about that.

 

[sarahoneill]

Seems that Charter just wants people to buy the most expensive tier to lose the cap. There's an interesting article here about that:
http/www.atelier-us.com/e-business-and-it/article/another-cable-isp-imposing-bandwidth-caps

 

[Guest]

It's all about ARPU - average revenue per unit/user.

CableTV, VoD, VoIP, these are the cash cows of broadband providers in this country.

They know that increasing broadband speeds and no usage caps would be the deathknell of their cash cow services. ARPU would go down. They deliberately hold back broadband speeds and implement usage caps to keep ARPU high.

In their eyes, you want to get your VoD service from Netflix, fine, but you'll have to pay for our most expensive plan to do it.

We seriously need to get the government involved in this. I am a libertarian but we have a duopoly or monopoly in most cities in the country. Citizens have no real choice in broadband providers.

What we really need is municipal fiber optic to the home. Let would-be ISPs connect to the municipal head-end to provide ISP service to citizens. It's a shame Obama did not put that in his stimulus plan.

 

[xxzabxx]

My two cents :

No one has even realy commented on the potential harm this is going to do to future products/apps/tv/ etc etc etc. Now adays damn near everything is tied to the web in some way. These companies are not only limiting there customers, in a sense they may be limiting technological progress. Think about it, things are moving to an even larger "online world" you can shop online, pay almost all bills online, date online, screw online *virtualy of course*, you name it and it can and will be done online. *with obvious exceptions*

Now , put a cap on what consumers can do... All of a sudden instead of companies trying to strive for the new and innovative. The next big thing. They will be doing so with even greater limitations on what they can do. No longer is the "sky is the limit" But the limit is the sky, or the cap if you will. All of a sudden every company has to think of how their product or service will fit into the average person internet budget of sorts.

Will billy be able to afford to watch Super X Poke Extreme Cage Match v2.0 this month? How much of his parents bandwith will it eat up? And before you now it, maybe not evenly conciously, but developers and inventors alike will be forcing themselves to think smaller. Think less quality to achieve less of a digital footprint in your monthly cap.

Would we be having this almost golden age of technology we are now, if there had been caps greater than just the level of current technology. What if we were all capped at 56k because companies refused to update with the ever growing world wide web, and the marketplace it has become? We certainly wouldent have nearly the same HD quality, and it wouldent be a stretch to say that almost all of peoples favorite toys would be mere shadows of there current selves.

Seriously, think less for what this current impact is. Think of the far greater impact this is going to have on the future of technology as we know it.

~Zab

 

[enforcer22]

[citation][nom]macer1[/nom]The internet is not a necessity, its in the same category as a cell phone.[/citation]

welcome to the 90's

your analagy is also incorrect a cell phone for alot people is a necessity. once again in the 90's your statment would be corret however your way behind the times. thats like saying a home phone isnt a necessity because we have a mail system. while that was true at one time again time goes on. try and keep up.