Netflix Slams ISPs Again for Broadband Caps

CommanderFrank

Cat Can't Scratch It
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The rhetoric between Netflix and ISP companies is ratcheting up over company imposed bandwidth caps again, but this time Netflix is taking their concerns straight to the consumer. Netflix is suggesting the ISPs are capping for the financial profit, not bandwidth management.

"Wireline bandwidth is an almost unlimited resource due to advances in Internet architecture. Adding more capacity is easy. The marginal cost of providing an extra gigabyte of data—enough to deliver one episode of "30 Rock" from Netflix—is less than one cent, and falling."
 
Perhaps Netflix should start up their own ISP. If they're good on their complaints and promises, I would jump ship in a heartbeat. Google too with their 100-1000mbps internet.
 
How the hell does a single 30min episode move a gigabyte of data.
 
A 30 minute episode of Nurse Jackie that I downloaded last night was in 720p and the file size was 556mb. So, I can imagine a 1080p 30 minute episode being 1gb.
 
Perhaps Netflix should start up their own ISP. If they're good on their complaints and promises, I would jump ship in a heartbeat. Google too with their 100-1000mbps internet.

You'll NEVER see this. I don't doubt that the ISPs are taking us for all they can but make no mistake about, this infrastructure ain't cheap and easy, if it were we'd see a lot more competition though current laws and regulations tend to block competition.
 
How the hell does a single 30min episode move a gigabyte of data.

Well either they're talking 1080HD resolution, or talking more along the lines of a DVD level of compression where a 4.7GB dvd can hold roughly 2hours of video. Sure you can use compression and squeeze it down even further, but the idea is the same.
 
I'm amazed the ISP's have not come out with a "Streaming" upgrade that you can get for only $19.99/month. They won't count streaming video, toward the cap, from services like Netflix.
 
I just got a notice the other day from Charter that I would have to ditch my $2./mth cable card for their $10./mth HD box, on or after Aug 8th.

The up news to that is that I get all fees for the box waived for 1 year for the inconvenience :rolleyes:

This $140.+ every month is a killer. To get HD, you have to have Expanded basic. On top of that, HD is $10. more! I have no special channels like HBO, etc.

Thinking of just going basic. That will drop it to a little over $50. w/16mbps internet. I already have Netflix.
 
You'll NEVER see this. I don't doubt that the ISPs are taking us for all they can but make no mistake about, this infrastructure ain't cheap and easy, if it were we'd see a lot more competition though current laws and regulations tend to block competition.

Actually, all considering, the infrastructure is cheap and easy. The cost for netflix to deliver content is something like 6 cents a gigabyte. The large data providers have already recouped the costs with laying the ground work, and currently just find it easiest to rape the consumer.The biggest reason why there is no competition has to do with "legal" monopolies, these monopolies are sanctioned by local governments, this means it is literally impossible to have competition.



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I just got a notice the other day from Charter that I would have to ditch my $2./mth cable card for their $10./mth HD box, on or after Aug 8th.

The up news to that is that I get all fees for the box waived for 1 year for the inconvenience :rolleyes:

This $140.+ every month is a killer. To get HD, you have to have Expanded basic. On top of that, HD is $10. more! I have no special channels like HBO, etc.

Thinking of just going basic. That will drop it to a little over $50. w/16mbps internet. I already have Netflix.

Yeah, Charter is expensive (which is why I don't have cable through 'em), but they're the only ISP in my area that doesn't have caps.
 
Yeah, Charter is expensive (which is why I don't have cable through 'em), but they're the only ISP in my area that doesn't have caps.

Charter does have soft caps, but they're pretty generous and they only enforce them if you continually exceed them by a large margin. I have the 25/5 and it comes with a 500GB/month soft cap.
 
Everyone that has ever gotten cap warnings like I have should just do what I did...jump ship to a business class connection with your same provider and get preferred bandwidth, and unlimited data. :D
 
CAPs for bits delivered just discourages use to try and keep you using normal / digital cable at their premium price.

If they were serious about bandwidth management issues they wouldn't be over subscribing everyone with super wide lines and instead would charge more based on speed and start basic much lower... Joe user who reads Facebook probably can't tell the difference between a 1 and a 10Mbit line.
 
Everyone that has ever gotten cap warnings like I have should just do what I did...jump ship to a business class connection with your same provider and get preferred bandwidth, and unlimited data. :D

Oh Yeah great ideal.. That would take me from 53 a month that I am now to 230 a month.. Certainly no issue with that price increase.
 
I'll just keep using the neighbor's unsecured wi-fi connection for my netflix streaming. :D
 
Tear down the wall of monopoly networks! I'd love to see Netflix get into the ISP business. Not sure how feasible it is at the moment with government sponsored monopolies though.
 
Everyone that has ever gotten cap warnings like I have should just do what I did...jump ship to a business class connection with your same provider and get preferred bandwidth, and unlimited data. :D

Yeah that'll show them! You go over some limit they impose and they get rewarded with more money for month for you using the same exact thing you did before! Way to fight the system!
 
Buisness class really isnt that much more a moth. Think 15x1 is like 70 a month with time warner cable. Still wairing on 50x5 to hit my area. Just anoughter month or 2.
 
Yeah, Charter is expensive (which is why I don't have cable through 'em), but they're the only ISP in my area that doesn't have caps.

Charter's not too bad cost wise.. I get 12megabit, phone, and cable for $79.99 + fees (a touch over $90). I won't complain too much about that, considering the caps aren't too bad (I've never even got close).
 
Charter does have soft caps, but they're pretty generous and they only enforce them if you continually exceed them by a large margin. I have the 25/5 and it comes with a 500GB/month soft cap.

25/5 is 250GB/mo, at least around here. That said, I go over that cap every month and haven't heard a peep from Charter.
 
Buisness class really isnt that much more a moth. Think 15x1 is like 70 a month with time warner cable. Still wairing on 50x5 to hit my area. Just anoughter month or 2.

Call TWC up and see if you can get the 50/5 internet plan. I too have 15/1 now and I asked yesterday about the 50/5. I can get it if I want it. It will require a new modem with wifi built into it and a tech to come out to your house to install it all. Its 99.95 install and 99.95 a month after that.
 
I use AT&T UVERSE internet ( I use COMCAST for TV ) the reason i use Uverse is there are NO BANDWITH CAPS!!! Just tiered service, Im getting 24 Down and in 3 years my internet has never went down once, Zero Problems. Here is the link which states No Caps.
http://www.att.com/u-verse/explore/resource-landing.jsp

I'm pretty sure ATT has capped DSL to 150gb and U-Verse to 250gb per month.

I wonder if other companies like Steam, PSN, Xbox Live, etc. will also rally against these horrible bandwidth caps. They won't survive long with these caps getting tighter and there being more and more movies, music, games, etc. to download. These ISPs will kill off digital distribution and physical media definitely wouldn't go anywhere!
 
ROFL, newsflash: companies do things for financial profit. :rolleyes:

ROFL, newsflash. Companies are conspiring to limit access when there is nigh unlimited resources available in order to quash competition and buttfuck the consumer.
 
Good to see Netflix pick it up for us.

I, for one, am tired of the claim that us big users are just pirates. A single YouTube party (aka drunk guys showing each other stuff they found and playing music off it) can easily be a few gigabytes in a single evening nowadays.
 

Yeah, and the terminology on the U-Verse site is really vague:

Bandwidth is how the bits of data sent over a network are measured and delivered into your home, office or anywhere a connection is made. Other terms that are associated with bandwidth are data transfer rate, band and bits per second (bps).

Basically it sounds like they are saying that they won't ever throttle your connection, not that there isn't an overall data cap.
 
Well either they're talking 1080HD resolution, or talking more along the lines of a DVD level of compression where a 4.7GB dvd can hold roughly 2hours of video. Sure you can use compression and squeeze it down even further, but the idea is the same.
or the hi-def episodes have dolby 5.1 because in my experience it's the audio that really ups the size compared to the resolution of the video
 
Call TWC up and see if you can get the 50/5 internet plan. I too have 15/1 now and I asked yesterday about the 50/5. I can get it if I want it. It will require a new modem with wifi built into it and a tech to come out to your house to install it all. Its 99.95 install and 99.95 a month after that.

Oh I know how much it is.. You can get the 30x5 for only 20 more a month over what RR reg cost. Thats the best deal if you dont have all 3 services. Thats like 65 to 75 a month for 30x5. The modem with the wifi can be briged down to a modem.
 
The ISPs are whiners. Due to the way the CDN (content distribution network, AKA Akamai) works heavy traffic is isolated to the last mile.

Caps are there to protect the ISPs other business: TV. It has nothing to do with cost of delivering bits.

That said: netflix content ingestion process is pretty messed up. A lot of their content looks like crap and I'd rather skip ads on my MC rig than watch poorly processed, artifact laden nodef crap from Netflix.

If you want to see streaming media done right, Zune Video Marketplace on xbox is where it's at. Short of BluRay or the Torrents you'll not find better fidelity. But it's not cheap. But hey, when you're trying to stay legal you get what you pay for. Netflix all you can eat $9/m shit is still shit.
 
The ISPs are whiners. Due to the way the CDN (content distribution network, AKA Akamai) works heavy traffic is isolated to the last mile.

Caps are there to protect the ISPs other business: TV. It has nothing to do with cost of delivering bits.

That said: netflix content ingestion process is pretty messed up. A lot of their content looks like crap and I'd rather skip ads on my MC rig than watch poorly processed, artifact laden nodef crap from Netflix.

If you want to see streaming media done right, Zune Video Marketplace on xbox is where it's at. Short of BluRay or the Torrents you'll not find better fidelity. But it's not cheap. But hey, when you're trying to stay legal you get what you pay for. Netflix all you can eat $9/m shit is still shit.

Video quality of my games, I care. Of movies, no so much. Netflix is fine for me. I don't have any desire to buy blue ray, or all my movies again a third time. So, Sony can piss off - Streaming all the way, I'm fine with the quality I'm getting right now on my 62 inch 1080P set. Streaming at 1080P will get there, and the cost will come down.
 
Netflix streaming looks great with the built in app on, my samsung. Anything else i have tried does not have the same quality. On my ps3 or pc.
 
Oh Yeah great ideal.. That would take me from 53 a month that I am now to 230 a month.. Certainly no issue with that price increase.

Comcast business class internet is only $5 more a month than standalone residential internet, at least where I live in CA.

It didn't take more than few seconds for me to decide which one I'd rather have.

(No caps, guaranteed bandwidth minimums, and SLA, etc. -- business class is way better.)
 
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