Broadband Cap Limits Petition

T

ThermoNuke

Weaksauce
Joined
Feb 25, 2007
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I know it's a one in a million chance of this EVER making a difference... But I suppose it is worth a shot... Tired of what some cable companies can get away with...

My Isp has 50mb cable service.. But with 100GB/mo caps.. Anything over I get billed .50c a gig. Their cap used to be 50GB until a couple months ago... How ridiculous is that? My two sons and I easily blow through that in a month and they have no competition here...Im stuck on a grandfathered plan that isnt offered anymore 10mb/s unlimited...


Maybe its fantasy but it would be nice if the FCC could say; "Look no lower than 250GB caps". ISP's could compete from there up and we should be comfortable. Many will bark that this will only over saturate networks but how long will we accept excuses to pinch pennies on infrastructure that is needed for now and the future anyways.


https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/pe...-states-prevent-abuse-consumers-isps/8Cd4VBMQ

If we could spread this and make it big enough.. Who knows what could happen.
 
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Yeah I know the feeling when there is only one ISP in your area and you have to put up with terrible cable service! I saw my cable statement for this month and noticed something similar concerning how much downloading I did for the month. I have to investigate further to see if there is a cap I cannot exceed for each month.
 
You've got it lucky at 50cents a GB over. We have a 120GB cap, as soon as we go over, boom, 40$ charge, 1.50$ for every GB after that up to 50$. We already pay 51$ a month. It's insane, and it's the only service available to us.
 
It might be a lose/lose if the feds have to mandate this ... Congress is already gunning for the FCC for getting into things that the Congressmen think are none of their business ... if there is enough local interest in broadband you might have better luck with a local petition to get the local government to bring in a competing supplier of broadband (your local politicians are at least elected by the people signing the petition so it might motivate them more to deal with the problem).

If the government mandates limits then where there are monopolies or limited competition (most locations) the supplier would likely just raise the rate (so they get the same revenue but without the cap in place). With competition there is at least the possibility of competing caps (or no caps) and different pricing structures. I would think as mobile broadband improves then those suppliers might start raising the caps and lowering the prices to compete with the land based suppliers.

Good luck.
 
I was thinking this was about speed caps. I know my local ISP (Comcast) can give you speeds well into the hundreds for both DL/UL, but they price everything into tiers. Once you go above 30'ish the price goes up exponentially.
 
Why do you think they even deserve to have 250gb/month limits? They markup for consumer BW is probably in the 100x range or more in some cases.

Caps are an artificial thing invented by consumer ISPs to gouge prices. BW isn't some limited resource. It's unlimited. Whether or not you use it, the lines and towers controlling everything need to be serviced and maintained.
 
You should look into getting a business account. It's probably not much more expensive and I'm thinking no data caps. At least with Comcast there aren't any.
 
Hopefully we don't run out of Bytes in the mines.

It keeps being treated like a natural resource.
 
Internet isn't a basic human right. You're purchasing a service from a company who gets to set the rules on how you use it. If you don't like it, you'll have to find a service provider that you do like. I know this isn't going to be a popular statement, but it's how it works. If you don't like something, or you don't agree to the terms, you don't have to continue using it.

Bandwidth caps and rate limiting -- unfortunately, you're going to have to deal with it. I kind of question why someone needs more than 30Mb download speeds on a residential connection, but to each their own... I'd take quality 6Mb connection over an over saturated 30Mb connection any day!

Shoelace said:
BW isn't some limited resource. It's unlimited
Click to expand...

How do you figure? Bandwidth is far from being unlimited. You can almost always add more, but there is a rather large cost in doing so.
 
The problem for a lot of people is they cant find another provider because the provider they have is the only option. And yeah, that's life. Its severely disappointing that there isn't a company that's able to deliver fiber to every home at competitive prices. It seems like Verizon's FIOS was a failure in my area as they stopped expanding the network years ago, and everyone that was hoping to jump ship from Comcast once FIOS finally made it to their street, even though the street down the block had it is SOL.

I enjoy 30Mb+ download speeds because it lets me have some friends over and pick out an educational public access documentary on plankton we'd like to watch in 1080p MKV format and then not sit around for 30 minutes to several hours waiting for it to download. This goes double when you have a good sound system and want to get the DTS HD MA audio track to really hear in detail how plankton sound when moving underwater. I'd say about 50% of my documentary watching can be planned ahead for and can be downloaded slowly overnight, but half of the time its spontaneous.

Also when a new game comes out and you don't want to be the last person in the world to login or you want to get it quick before the masses start downloading it and the sever you're getting it from is having trouble keeping up with the load so your speeds drop to dial-up days.
 
The congress and the government wants you to use less internet anyways, it is to their benefit. There is a great chance that people who make money off you who own those companies are already embedded to the government, on top of that you downloading more free stuff without paying the rich pisses them off. They like the good old days where you could not get all the news and information about a place so they could lie to you all they want in the tv and newspaper news, they miss the days where it was very hard to get a good estimate on the price of a car, house or a loan so they could make all the money off you. This whole press one button and learn all the dirty things the government doing, access all the music and movies that rich people are getting richer off and get all the cost information on any thing or service you may purchase is really undermining the foundations of our current political and economical system. So yeah don't be surprised if you get hit with even stricter limits in the future.
 
Download caps are bullshit. If the ISP you are on only offers very slow speeds , they likely don't have the network to support massive amounts of monthly bandwidth. But if you are on a 30+ meg connection and your ISP limits you to 100GB's a month then you are being ripped off.

Caps for advanced networks either by DOCSIS 3.0 or full fiber are just a money grab.

Signed.
 
Demon10000 said:
Internet isn't a basic human right. You're purchasing a service from a company who gets to set the rules on how you use it. If you don't like it, you'll have to find a service provider that you do like. I know this isn't going to be a popular statement, but it's how it works. If you don't like something, or you don't agree to the terms, you don't have to continue using it.

Bandwidth caps and rate limiting -- unfortunately, you're going to have to deal with it. I kind of question why someone needs more than 30Mb download speeds on a residential connection, but to each their own... I'd take quality 6Mb connection over an over saturated 30Mb connection any day!



How do you figure? Bandwidth is far from being unlimited. You can almost always add more, but there is a rather large cost in doing so.
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I ABSOLUTELY agree with you! It is a service and in most forms not a nessecity!

But we can both agree that in many cases the limits just simply dont make sense. Look at connections you can get in other places of the world who are a less advanced country than we are.

A 100gb cap is just sticking it to your customer base. On a 50mb connection its only a handful of days full speed service.

You may feel a 30mb or even a 50mb service is excessive. It just may be for your purposes.. But with a family that has two teenage boys my house has 3 Xbox 360, 1 PS3, PSvita, 3 Laptops, 3 Desktops, and other smaller devices. Everyone is a big fan of youtube and streaming so we can saturate our current 10mb connection in a heart beat. Keep in mind, use is only going to go higher with every coming day. Its not like the internet is going to reach a "level" off point.
 
Demon10000 said:
Internet isn't a basic human right. You're purchasing a service from a company who gets to set the rules on how you use it. If you don't like it, you'll have to find a service provider that you do like. I know this isn't going to be a popular statement, but it's how it works. If you don't like something, or you don't agree to the terms, you don't have to continue using it.

Bandwidth caps and rate limiting -- unfortunately, you're going to have to deal with it. I kind of question why someone needs more than 30Mb download speeds on a residential connection, but to each their own... I'd take quality 6Mb connection over an over saturated 30Mb connection any day!

How do you figure? Bandwidth is far from being unlimited. You can almost always add more, but there is a rather large cost in doing so.
Click to expand...

You're looking at bandwidth caps vs bandwidth from the wrong perspective.

BW is unlimited for consumers because the following things are true:

Regardless of how much you transfer your ISP still needs to maintain the ability to service you. They can't just shut you off and call it a day once they've decided you have went over their arbitrary cap (they could but they would be out of business very quickly).

With that said, then the cost to service you is not related to you using the bandwidth or not. The lines running in the ground do not care if data is traveling through them or not, neither do the air waves if you're talking wireless.

Now we can prove that the cost (burden) for each customer on the ISP is not attached to the amount of BW you use. Customer A could use nothing while customer B transfers multiple gigs a day. In the end both consumers cost the ISP the same amount.

Of course you could say oh someone not using the service will have less problems, so tech support will be less for them and that's totally valid but that's not really important here. The cost that the ISP pays for the bandwidth is also not a factor because compared to the cost they charge us, it's close to irrelevant. For each penny they charge us, we might be paying $1 or or more.

The only thing BW caps do is stall technology.

If a dude decides he wants to transfer dozens of gigs a day and this is causing other people on his node to have worse performance then the only person to blame here is your ISP because they are happily stuffing their pockets with the extra fees they are charging from the dude but everyone else's experience is still awful. The only one who wins here is the ISP and the problem would exist with or without caps.
 
the cost of the internet can't be the only thing considered when setting prices .you have to consider employee wages (usually the biggest expense for a company) maintainance, support, hardware, etc.
 
No. Government should stay the fuck out of business. Competition is a better solution, and I say this suffering the exact same situation as you. I'm in Madison, Wisconsin...which should be a technological haven. However, I'm limited only to a single ISP(Charter) that has frustrated the shit out of me on various occasions.

Here is a bit of advice though: call the provider and talk to a sales rep, and tell them you're thinking of cancelling your service. They'll often give you a huge discount, perhaps as much as half, and they'll usually agree to make that your regular rate. I took a promo rate from Charter and got them to make it my normal monthly charge. Done that for other companies I get services from, as well. You'd be surprised just how willing many big corporations are to keep you on, even at a loss.

At the very least, you might come out paying less for those stupid caps.
 
ShoeLace said:
Regardless of how much you transfer your ISP still needs to maintain the ability to service you. They can't just shut you off and call it a day once they've decided you have went over their arbitrary cap (they could but they would be out of business very quickly).
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Okay. Go to an all-you-can-eat restaurant in the morning and try to stay there till the end of the day. Try it again the next day. See what happens.

Businesses reserve the right to deny you their goods or services, and that's how it's supposed to be. Unfortunately, government has seen fit to force businesses to have transactions with people over very stupid criteria.
 
oh man i read the title and i though it said "Borderlands Cap Limits Petition " and i went huh lol

but hope they will listen, most likely they wont but never hurts to try. lol


man i wish google would expand there broadband already :/
 
Dome said:
the cost of the internet can't be the only thing considered when setting prices .you have to consider employee wages (usually the biggest expense for a company) maintainance, support, hardware, etc.
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Totally, but whether or not you actively use the service has no bearing on those other expenses.

If your line is sitting there idle the hardware is still powered on. There's also still people in the building making sure all of the infrastructure is working, etc..

Okay. Go to an all-you-can-eat restaurant in the morning and try to stay there till the end of the day. Try it again the next day. See what happens.

Businesses reserve the right to deny you their goods or services, and that's how it's supposed to be. Unfortunately, government has seen fit to force businesses to have transactions with people over very stupid criteria.
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Show me an ISP in an area of the world where there's > 1 ISP in the area and they instantly turn off your service the moment you go over the limit.

I can save you the trouble of looking btw. None exist. It would be a catastrophic mistake on their part to offer their service in such a way. They have the right to do it, but they won't because no one would use them. Instead of denying you service they just charge you absurd rates.
 
this is why i have DSL, the only cable net providers in my area all have caps.

where is google to save us all?

edit: and fios is pretty much every where in my town except for my zip code.
 
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shoelace said:
BW is unlimited for consumers because the following things are true:
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Nothing that you listed actually backs up the statement that Bandwidth is unlimited.

Lets break it down:


I often describe bandwidth to people as a highway. It a small city, you have a two lane highway. That means you can fit two cars through the highway at any one time -- we'll call this a bandwidth limit of two.

If this city starts to grow and the highway can't sustain it's traffic, they may expand into a four lane highway. We've effectively doubled our bandwidth. Now we have a limit of four.

The city gets a bit bigger and realizes that people need a way to go through it, but more effiently. This time they implement a lane that requires a toll. If you want to get from exit 1 to exit 5 without the congestion of people getting off at exits 2,3 and 4, then you can pay a premium to drive past them.

It's really no different with internet traffic. You have the proverbial "tube" that can only hold so much data. If you want to push more through it, then you have to have a bigger "tube".


Now the big difference between the highway and the internet is that a car going from exit 1 to exit 5 will eventually get there even if the road is congested. In the internet world, if a packet gets to is sent from "exit 1" to "exit 5", and confirmation isn't receive that it's made it (could be slow, could be discarded, something could be broken) then you start all over.


My point is that there are most certainly physical limitations to bandwidth. Becuase 50% of the network isn't utilized at parts of the day, it doesn't mean it's infinite.


I think expecting to have an unlimited internet connection without any sort of cap or restriction is just being selfish. However, I think having small caps are nothing but greed. When used properly, I can see where caps really will help keep people aware of how much they are transfering.

Shoelace said:
The only thing BW caps do is stall technology.
Click to expand...

Can you elaborate on technolgoy inovations that have been stalled becuase a bandwidth cap was reached?




ThermoNuke said:
But we can both agree that in many cases the limits just simply dont make sense. Look at connections you can get in other places of the world who are a less advanced country than we are.
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I won't pretent to know how much about the internet connections in other country other than India. I have supported an Indian call center for five years. And what I can tell you is that, while their internet was fast, it was horrible. The latency was so bad that you really couldn't do anything. So does all this faster internet come with poorer internet? I don't really know... nor do I know if it's cheaper to maintain higher speeds in other countries...






ThermoNuke said:
A 100gb cap is just sticking it to your customer base. On a 50mb connection its only a handful of days full speed service.
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A cap should have no relationship to a connection speed. If a file comes down at 5Mb of 50Mb -- the size of the file is the constant. If you're pulling down 100Gb on a 50Mb connection... eh... maybe you're doing stuff you shouldn't be doing, or maybe you need to spread it out a little. But I will agree that 100Gb cap is silly regardless. The cap should be effective, but still let the consumer do what they need to do.



ThermoNuke said:
You may feel a 30mb or even a 50mb service is excessive. It just may be for your purposes.. But with a family that has two teenage boys my house has 3 Xbox 360, 1 PS3, PSvita, 3 Laptops, 3 Desktops, and other smaller devices. Everyone is a big fan of youtube and streaming so we can saturate our current 10mb connection in a heart beat. Keep in mind, use is only going to go higher with every coming day. Its not like the internet is going to reach a "level" off point.
Click to expand...

My household relies heavily on the internet -- for TV, for videos, skype, gaming... lots of different services. We average ~150Gb of traffic a month, but during the winter months where we are watching more TV, that easily peaks to 200-250Gb. I understand how easy it is to hit a cap. I've gone over quite a few times, just not consistantly.

I don't necesarrily think the higher tiers are excessive, I'm sure they have their userbase (ovbisouly they do from their popularity). My point is that we shouldn't expect to have unlimited speeds without any sort of restriction for ~50-60 a month. So many people out there want this, maybe they should try to start their own service provider and see why it won't work. There is a reason FIOS isn't expanding and google fiber isn't everywhere...
 
@Demon10000

I think expecting to have an unlimited internet connection without any sort of cap or restriction is just being selfish. However, I think having small caps are nothing but greed. When used properly, I can see where caps really will help keep people aware of how much they are transfering.
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The problem is, those caps don't solve everything you wrote. The pipe is still clogged with and without the caps because the service is never stopped for the people who go over the cap.

In other words, the ISPs would be just fine without the caps. The caps are nothing but a source of extra revenue for them, that's it.

Can you elaborate on technolgoy inovations that have been stalled becuase a bandwidth cap was reached?
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If the norm becomes people running around with 20-100gb monthly caps then who's going to want to introduce new bandwidth heavy services? No one would want to.

Look at Sweden and a lot of Asian countries. They are all running around with 50mb/50mb unmetered internet for over a decade at super cheap prices. Why can that exist in those countries but not the US or Canada? It's not because BW is cheaper in Sweden.

Btw I'm not even cranky or a victim of ISP capping thievery. I live in the US and happen to be in an area where my ISP does not cap us but knowing they could cap me and that most of the US population + Canada has caps bothers me a lot.
 
Well, I was finally able to change ISP, now I no longer have an official cap, but I'm being throttled, at times heavily. Since my choices are unfortunately limited, I go with no fees for busting an artificial cap.

Choose your poison I guess... Sad.
 
DSL is starting to have caps now there buddy like ATT/Centurylink so better think twice before saying that dsl dont have caps.

andrewbub said:
this is why i have DSL, the only cable net providers in my area all have caps.

where is google to save us all?

edit: and fios is pretty much every where in my town except for my zip code.
Click to expand...
 
Stiletto said:
No. Government should stay the fuck out of business. Competition is a better solution, and I say this suffering the exact same situation as you. I'm in Madison, Wisconsin...which should be a technological haven. However, I'm limited only to a single ISP(Charter) that has frustrated the shit out of me on various occasions.
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Didn't the government subsidize the construction of the internet backbone?
 
I'm fortunate enough to have fast and reliable FiOS service with zero caps. But I've had Comcast and Time Warner so I know the "cap" pain and have had bad experiences with going over my cap using completely legal usage.

The reality is that overage chargers are the ultimate end game for many ISP's but they have to justify it in some sense first. Its the nonsensical bullshit cell phone providers are attempting to pass as PR these days. Telling people that the public WANTS caps and overage charges and utter garbage like that makes even more frustrating. At least with cell phone providers I could understand why caps in heavy usage areas could be a requirement , but for landline ISP's there is simply no excuse. Unless your ISP maxes at 512k download speed , then caps are a pure self imposed business tactic to save money on bandwidth and force heavy users to go else where or pay more.

Right now if I was willing to deal with caps I could get Optimum Online for almost $80 less a month than FiOS but I'm happy to pay for zero capped service that isn't going to capped anytime soon. I bet most of you would happily pay for uncapped service (and probably do via business versions of the same network/line) but its simply not offered in most places.

Before various cable co's decided to start upgrading to DOCSIS 3.0 you could even make a few viable points for capped service being understandable. But the majority of the major ISP's in this country have expanded networks that can handle the heavy users , but that doesn't equal more profit and that's the bullshit reality of the situation.

Hell Netflix accounts for a huge portion of data traffic per day in this country , not piracy (torrents and the like) but a totally legit service. And I'm sure that also has a major play in the role of data caps being imposed. Time Warner , Comcast , Optimum and so on don't want you to "cut the cord" and save tons of money by just using your internet service solely.
 
Godmachine,

I'm on Optimum Online at the moment. We're not capped. Currently getting 18mb/2mb with the basic plan using a docsis 3.0 modem. It's $135 for their entry level triple play package after contract promotion prices.
 
They need to move to using a token bucket system for broadband.

Pay X number of dollars get "Y" GBs of data per billing cycle at full speed, if you run out however you stay connected/online only at a reduced speed (something like 256Kbps) until the next billing cycle.

If you want more data per month, you request it and the provider bills you accordingly at the new rate/tier.

This removes the possibility of overages and places the management of the data in the hands of the purchaser.
 
I'm curious, why doesn't an ISP capitalize on all the ISPs that offer bandwidth caps and slow speeds?

Imagine if an ISP came in with a big banner that said "NO BANDWIDTHCAPS; HIGH SPEEDS!!!"

I bet they'd get TONs of service! Even to the casuals who may not really care about that stuff would probably realize it's the best deal.
 
Azureth said:
I'm curious, why doesn't an ISP capitalize on all the ISPs that offer bandwidth caps and slow speeds?

Imagine if an ISP came in with a big banner that said "NO BANDWIDTHCAPS; HIGH SPEEDS!!!"

I bet they'd get TONs of service! Even to the casuals who may not really care about that stuff would probably realize it's the best deal.
Click to expand...

The majority of customers don't care, the minority that DO care would probably move to that ISP and lower their profit margins.

Which is why the tagline " No overage charges" is used by some companies....typically cell service providers.
 
ShoeLace said:
Totally, but whether or not you actively use the service has no bearing on those other expenses.
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It definitely has a bearing. There is a concrete cost to ISPs in increasing or eliminating monthly caps. The more you use the service, the less the company can oversell their upstream bandwidth. If customers have 100Mbps service, but are only allowed 1 GB per month, an ISP could get away with a puny backhaul of maybe only 100Mbps because the poor bastard customers won't be able to saturate much of it, since they by necessity must carefully meter their usage. Offer them unlimited usage, suddenly you've got a bunch of people wanting 100Mbps all at once and you actually need to invest in a suitably sized backhaul; probably smaller than the aggregate of all customers, but still large enough to guarantee that any customer can typically achieve the speeds he was promised. Most ISPs lower the bitcaps to the point that they can predict aggregate traffic at peak hours, and get backhaul barely big enough, or maybe a bit smaller than it should be.

The problem is that the cost of bandwidth is inflated HUGELY when the customer is billed. The whole Bell-Teksavvy-usage-based-billing fiasco here in Canada exposed that Bell's overage charged per GB were inflated hundreds of times. They were charging dollars when a gigabyte actually cost fractions of a cent.

I'm a strong advocate for increasing or eliminating bitcaps, indeed other parts of the world, and even Google in Kansas City can manage to sell fast Internet with no caps. So, the business model exists, and it can still be highly profitable. These companies are more forward-looking and actually compete by trying to provide better service than their competitors.

Most ISPs in Canada and the US don't need to compete in this way; due to often being incumbent monopolies; and to make matters worse, they have a disincentive to provide better Internet: they often also sell phone and/or TV service, something you might unsubscribe from if your Internet service was better.

tl;dr: Yes, bitcaps are a largely a scam, but not entirely. And Canada-US Internet sucks for various reasons that won't be fixed any time soon.
 
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my ISP has a pretty relaxed cap plan,. 350GB Cap. first 3 Overages are only a slap on the wrist and then...

"Customer accounts will not be billed for exceeding their monthly allowance until the third overage. On the third and subsequent overages, the monthly allowance will be increased in installments of 50 GB at a cost of $10 per installment. "

I think that is more than fair! Yay for Suddenlink 107M Package!
 
the_b_man,
You quoted me out of context. You're right but you forgot that ISPs do NOT stop serving you when you've reached the cap. All they do is charge you a crazy fee.

If they are over saturated without caps they are still over saturated with caps. The only difference is you have to pay more for the service.
 
Yes and no; the theory would go that most customers avoid hitting their cap instead of paying the fees, thus they've reduced saturation by influencing customer behaviour. On average, customers will use less bandwidth when there's a cap holding them back. The ISP's aggregate usage is thus lower. Without the cap, it would be higher, and they'd have to provide capacity to accommodate that, or else not deliver on speed promises (not that they usually do anyway)
 
So, now we're getting somewhere. The caps do nothing except hide an ISP's shortcomings. If you advertise xyz speeds to compete with a competitor but you can't provide those services without overloaded nodes then it's your fault as the ISP.

Right now, it's their fault but they are making us pay. They win, we lose. We don't gain anything in the end as a customer.
 
WARNING: Incoming wall of text

thedocta45 said:
Didn't the government subsidize the construction of the internet backbone?
Click to expand...

The precursor to the internet, ARPANET, was build by the DoD and there was some legislature that Al Gore passed that helped create what we know as the internet today but it wasn't subsidized by the government. However many landline companies and now wireless companies receive subsidies from the governments universal service fund to help service high cost loops.

Godmachine said:
Hell Netflix accounts for a huge portion of data traffic per day in this country , not piracy (torrents and the like) but a totally legit service. And I'm sure that also has a major play in the role of data caps being imposed. Time Warner , Comcast , Optimum and so on don't want you to "cut the cord" and save tons of money by just using your internet service solely.
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Sadly this is the case, ISP's view customers as a resource and if someone outside their network wants access to them they can pay to have that access to them. The Level3/Comcast peering dispute in 2010 is a good example of this.

Mackintire said:
Pay X number of dollars get "Y" GBs of data per billing cycle at full speed, if you run out however you stay connected/online only at a reduced speed (something like 256Kbps) until the next billing cycle.
Click to expand...

There's been some talk by ISP's in my area about something like this however I doubt it will happen anytime soon, there's much bigger problems for these companies to worry about first.

the_b_man said:
Yes and no; the theory would go that most customers avoid hitting their cap instead of paying the fees, thus they've reduced saturation by influencing customer behaviour. On average, customers will use less bandwidth when there's a cap holding them back. The ISP's aggregate usage is thus lower. Without the cap, it would be higher, and they'd have to provide capacity to accommodate that, or else not deliver on speed promises (not that they usually do anyway)
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Pretty much spot on. While I don't agree with caps this is the logic used by the people who implement them and their is evidence that they do help some.

Azureth said:
I'm curious, why doesn't an ISP capitalize on all the ISPs that offer bandwidth caps and slow speeds?
Click to expand...

Plenty of reasons. Infrastructure being the largest, the current infrastructure in the US is old and outdated and the cost of replacing it would be absurd. To give some perspective on it the company I used to work for spent $3,000,000 to build a FTTH network out to ~600 homes covering ~60 sq/mi of land. HFC can be cheaper to build out if you can reusing most of the existing coax, likewise FTTN can be cheaper as well if you can reuse the existing copper in the ground for VDSL. Even then how do you decide where to build out first? Do you build out to the area's that have high population density first? wealthy area's? or do you build out to the under served areas?

Data services aren't regulated like telephone is so there's no reason for ISP's to serve area's that are deemed unprofitable.

Then there's the whole issue with net neutrality, peering agreements, etc that needs to be dealt with.

thedocta45 said:
AT&T
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30 years ago you would have been right. The current incarnation of AT&T isn't anymore of a government ISP then Verizion or CenturyLink are.
 
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