There Are Nearly 200 ISPs Imposing Data Limits in the US

Megalith

Megalith

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BroadbandNow has published an extensive list of all broadband Internet providers currently using "data caps" to limit Internet usage: the exact number happens to be 196. The data cap amounts range from a lenient 10TB to a paltry 3GB, and there does not seem to be any consistent or sensible correlation between population and how much data is limited.

Data caps often vary regionally. In those cases, we've listed each provider’s lowest data cap. We have also included the number of customers served by each provider so you can see how many people are affected by data limits. If your Internet provider is on this list, we recommend that you monitor your data usage — particularly if you frequently stream video or download/upload large files.
 
What irritates me about this is I am most certain that major ISPs are not charged per TB or per PB. They have a big pipe coming in of a certain speed, and its up to them how to divide that up per user. Yet they charge you and me per TB now, where in the past they charged us the same way they are charged, by speed (and without business ports).

And for those of you who say, "1TB is more than enough". Sure, today. In 5 years do you think Comcast is going to increase your cap that so you don't have to pay more? I bet not. Your cap will still be 1TB and many more people will be over that cap. At that point they can really start gouging us.

The fluffy 1TB cap right now is just so we get use to the idea of a cap and think it is not a big deal. Someday it will be.
 
bigdogchris said:
What irritates me about this is I am most certain that major ISPs are not charged per TB or per PB. They have a big pipe coming in of a certain speed, and its up to them how to divide that up per user. Yet they charge you and me per TB now, where in the past they charged us the same way they are charged, by speed (and without business ports).

And for those of you who say, "1TB is more than enough". Sure, today. In 5 years do you think Comcast is going to increase your cap that so you don't have to pay more? I bet not. Your cap will still be 1TB and many more people will be over that cap. At that point they can really start gouging us.

The fluffy 1TB cap right now is just so we get use to the idea of a cap and think it is not a big deal. Someday it will be.
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I've already caved and am spending the extra $50/month for no cap. God, I wish I could move back to an area with competition...
 
1TB in a house with 4 boys is cutting it close for me. Especially when a new steam game comes out they all want to play at the same time. Comcast blows. Caps are only there so they can make more money, has absolutely no affect on anyone elses internet. Im paying for a pipe and not data from comcast. Its the sheer number of users that slow things down, not how much one person uses. Theres no big tank of data in the sky i'm using more than someone else. Arghh. Also as the one above said. I have no competition in my area.
 
bigdogchris said:
What irritates me about this is I am most certain that major ISPs are not charged per TB or per PB. They have a big pipe coming in of a certain speed, and its up to them how to divide that up per user. Yet they charge you and me per TB now, where in the past they charged us the same way they are charged, by speed (and without business ports).

And for those of you who say, "1TB is more than enough". Sure, today. In 5 years do you think Comcast is going to increase your cap that so you don't have to pay more? I bet not. Your cap will still be 1TB and many more people will be over that cap. At that point they can really start gouging us.

The fluffy 1TB cap right now is just so we get use to the idea of a cap and think it is not a big deal. Someday it will be.
Click to expand...

ISPs typically have peering agreements agreements and dont pay each other. Some have transit agreements like we do with the ISPs but those are typically not preferred routes. Peering agreements are the preferred method for an AS to connect to another AS as all they both pay for is the ports to connect to each other in other words the marginal cost for sending a packet effectively hits zero. Whats not clear to us is how much these ISPs are paying out in transit for agreements vs peering with other ISPs. Transit can get expensive very fast.

Pringle said:
https://broadbandnow.com/internet-providers-with-data-caps

http://gizmodo.com/here-are-at-least-196-isps-which-put-caps-on-their-cust-1797620874
Click to expand...

Thanks, for some reason google is not working at my office right now....
 
This is lame, but the biggest issue is all of the tools out there and how much they love their "unlimited" cellphone plans, which usually slow your speeds down to a crawl after a dozen gigabytes or so. Seeing how little most people care about that, standard ISPs aren't going to give a 2nd thought to their "lenient" caps and will probably lower them considerably.
 
I have a 300GB cap per month. Recently Bethesda put out a patch for Doom that was 34GB. I was pissed because this patch was for MP only and I only play the SP. I had to download a 34GB patch anyway. :(
 
rgraze911 said:
1TB in a house with 4 boys is cutting it close for me. Especially when a new steam game comes out they all want to play at the same time. Comcast blows. Caps are only there so they can make more money, has absolutely no affect on anyone elses internet. Im paying for a pipe and not data from comcast. Its the sheer number of users that slow things down, not how much one person uses. Theres no big tank of data in the sky i'm using more than someone else. Arghh. Also as the one above said. I have no competition in my area.
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with more and more porn becoming available in 4K, with 4 boys in the house steam games will be the least of your worries.
 
mnewxcv said:
with more and more porn becoming available in 4K, with 4 boys in the house steam games will be the least of your worries.
Click to expand...

Do mean to imply his sons will watching porn instead of fooling around with girls...or maybe its both?
 
Break the monopolies. Local loop unbundling and/or public fiber leased to whoever wants to create an ISP are the only ways out of this mess short of nationalizing the existing infrastructure.
 
Datacaps make more money cause people will spend more to go over the cap.
 
Totally agree that caps are BS and it's a just a way for ISPs to make money on overages. Just like the damn banks and their fees.

In any case, if there's no competition in your area, may be start something up yourself! That's what happened out here in Bay Area with a company called Sonic. Fast speeds, no caps, no monetizing your browsing data, you know, what a good ISP should be.
 
Trimlock said:
I have a data cap and it's never been enforced.
Click to expand...

I'm pretty sure with Comcast you get a few "grace" periods where they won't charge you, but after that if you go over you automatically get charged overages. Pretty much some bullshit.
 
bigdogchris said:
What irritates me about this is I am most certain that major ISPs are not charged per TB or per PB. They have a big pipe coming in of a certain speed, and its up to them how to divide that up per user. Yet they charge you and me per TB now, where in the past they charged us the same way they are charged, by speed (and without business ports).

And for those of you who say, "1TB is more than enough". Sure, today. In 5 years do you think Comcast is going to increase your cap that so you don't have to pay more? I bet not. Your cap will still be 1TB and many more people will be over that cap. At that point they can really start gouging us.

The fluffy 1TB cap right now is just so we get use to the idea of a cap and think it is not a big deal. Someday it will be.
Click to expand...

1TB is not enough in our household of 4. Bought a new PS4 pro and had to download games again, build a new computer and download software and games. Data cap maxed out in less than 4 days.
Netflix, youtube, etc. between 4 people with computers, tablets, phones, TV's and video game systems, and 1TB is used up quick. Netflix 4k HDR is about 11GB per hr.
 
MavericK said:
I'm pretty sure with Comcast you get a few "grace" periods where they won't charge you, but after that if you go over you automatically get charged overages. Pretty much some bullshit.
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I've gone over every month, so I'm not sure where the breaking point is. But my ISP is Comcast.
 
Trimlock said:
I've gone over every month, so I'm not sure where the breaking point is. But my ISP is Comcast.
Click to expand...

Have you gotten a notification? I've gotten emails from them stating that if I go over again, I will be billed. Haven't done so yet so I don't know if the threats are real, but I would assume they will charge me every chance they get.
 
MavericK said:
Have you gotten a notification? I've gotten emails from them stating that if I go over again, I will be billed. Haven't done so yet so I don't know if the threats are real, but I would assume they will charge me every chance they get.
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Yea, that's actually how I know I went over.

After this month I dont think we will go over again as our inlaws go back but I'll keep an eye out if Comcast bills us finally.
 
MavericK said:
Have you gotten a notification? I've gotten emails from them stating that if I go over again, I will be billed. Haven't done so yet so I don't know if the threats are real, but I would assume they will charge me every chance they get.
Click to expand...

I think they do it by region. I'm in Chicago, and received their bullshit letter stating they are "testing" a new system and my region was selected.

I've already gone over once. It even spits out a pop-up prompt when I login to Xfinity stating I've used one month out of my 2 month "grace period". Like they're doing me a favor or something o_O
 
I guess downloading my entire Steam games library within a month is out of question for these 200 ISPs. I have done this twice.

So glad that by chance we moved to a city monopolized by TWC/Spectrum about 15 years ago. Our monthly usage run in the TBs, not GBs.
 
Michael Powell told a Minority Media and Telecommunications Association audience that cable's interest in usage-based pricing was not principally about network congestion, but instead about pricing fairness...Asked by MMTC president David Honig to weigh in on data caps, Powell said that while a lot of people had tried to label the cable industry's interest in the issue as about congestion management. "That's wrong," he said. "Our principal purpose is how to fairly monetize a high fixed cost." Of course, as Broadband Reports notes, Powell is jumping from one myth (congestion) to another (fairness) that is just as ridiculous. If it was true, we'd see at least some prices going down. But we don't. Except the argument that usaged pricing is about fairness has been just as repeatedly debunked. If usage caps were about "fairness," carriers would offer the nation's grandmothers a $5-$15 a month tier that accurately reflected her twice weekly, several megabyte browsing of the Weather Channel website. Instead, what we most often see are low caps and high overages layered on top of already high existing flat rate pricing, raising rates for all users. Does raising rates on a product that already sees 90% profit margins sound like "fairness" to you?
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https://www.techdirt.com/articles/2...caps-have-nothing-to-do-with-congestion.shtml

"The cost of increasing [broadband] capacity has declined much faster than the increase in data traffic," says Dane Jasper, CEO of Sonic, an independent ISP based in Santa Rosa, Calif.

Jasper, of course, has reason to challenge his much larger rivals. However, he also backed up his argument with real numbers. A few years ago Sonic (formerly Sonic.net) spent about 20 percent of its revenue on basic infrastructure. Since then, the cost of routers, switching equipment and other related gear declined so much that Jasper says the company's infrastructure costs are now only a bit more than 1.5 percent of its revenue.
Click to expand...

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/2...ng-more-than-toll-uncompetitive-markets.shtml

reason why data caps are 100 percent BULLSHIT.
 
there data is little off, i work for mediacom the 1gig tier is actully 6tb monthly usage
desktop-08-08-2017-20-37-12-01-png.32826

i do do ton of downloading and streaming i dont think iv ever went over 2tb in a month
also the 6tb is the same for residential accounts its not special to employees or anything, the only difference is i get it for $30 a month

Desktop 08.08.2017 - 20.37.12.01.png


 
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So how many of these ISPs lease from Comcast or AT&T? Could explain why there are data caps.
 
With Cox, they're gonna start enforcing their 1 TB / month data cap (was 2 TB last year, but then silently reduced it) on their ultimate bundle, with no option to get unlimited data, oh except for paying for every 50GB afterwards, yipee...
 
So here's a dumb question for those who are under a cap; what are you using to track your data usage? I definitely don't trust Comcast's numbers and would like something reliable to compare my actual usage to the numbers Comcast says I'm using.
 
Pringle said:
So here's a dumb question for those who are under a cap; what are you using to track your data usage? I definitely don't trust Comcast's numbers and would like something reliable to compare my actual usage to the numbers Comcast says I'm using.
Click to expand...

My router.
 
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