American Internet Bandwidth Caps

[DrSithis]

Discuss it.

 

It is self-explanatory. If you're using Comcast(Xfinity) here is a heads up that they have merged with Time Warner Cable and that there are pending national bandwidth caps awaiting. The reason that this isn't a good idea is because the average child watches 1480 minutes of Movies and TV Shows on Netflix/Hulu. It's roughly 2.45GB/hr for the video stream from them which leverages a total of 257GB a month for just 1 child. If you have more, that's hundreds-to-thousands of data each month.

 

The main reason for the god-awful bandwidth cap is too stop(or slow down) piracy.

 

As shown on the Xfinity's new update for what their Internet Data Usage Plans show here is the caps you'll see

 

Internet Package - Bandwidth Allowed per Month

Economy             300GB

Economy Pro         300GB

Internet Essentials     300GB

Performance Starter    300GB

Performance     300GB

Blast!           350GB

Extreme 50     450GB

Extreme 105   600GB

 

 

Lets not forget for additional upgrades it's $10/GB. If you exceed the new data usage allowance, you're charged $1 for over usage!

[SovietWolf]

Fat lot of BS that is. But that is still better than my 'cap' I believe with Charter West, its 100GB/month where I am. Do not think that that is the cap but it is as read in their acceptable use agreement.

[StealthFPS]

Unlimited Bandwith FTW

[jks101]

AT&T FTW! light speed mothafuckas.

 

 

Slow speeds but good service : )))

[DrSithis]

AT&T is going to move that way aswell, don't shit yourself yet jks101.

[Daedhart]

To my knowledge, this has not happened yet. They are still waiting for government approval before going ahead with it. 2 years ago, Id say it would never be approved. But then, they bought out NBC with virtually no resistance...

 

BTW, all Comcast peeps already have a data cap. Last I checked (a few months ago), it was sitting at 250Gb. That 300Gb actually looks more generous than Comcast is now. No, you werent told. No, you probably didnt hit that cap.

 

I am against any sort of data cap, or any artificial limiter in general. However, I dont think us US's deserve to complain when Canada has well-established limits of 50-100Gb a month. I know some peeps in other countries with even less than that.

 

300Gb a month gives you about 10Gb a day. Seems kind of low, but HD movies for streaming services like Netflix rarely go above 6Gb each, and usually are even smaller. On top of that, streaming services are frequently limited in speed. Netflix has been paying off ISP's to remove hardware limits for its streaming in recent months. AFAIK, Comcast is not one of them. The "HD" you get from them doesnt compare with the HD you find on a Bluray; it doesnt even come close size wise. Netflix and Youtube are masters of video compression.

 

Im a mid to hardcore data peep. I have a torrent server and FTP/media server, and I rarely hit 250Gb. It has happened, though, but Im on Mediacom, which if they have a limit, they sure havent bother sending any warnings to me.

 

Honestly, I think data caps are the least of your worries. TWC is well known for their shitty infrastructure, shitty customer service, and shittiness in general. I have to deal with them on a daily basis, and the only ISP I hate more is Cox. Hell, Id take Charter over TWC, which is sad considering Charter is horrible. Comcast will probably be dragged down by TWC, but at least TWC customers should see improvements.

[DrSithis]

Canada doesn't really have limits. A lot of the Canadian ISPs sit between 500GB to 1TB(even unlimited).

[BillieJoe67]

My internet is slow as hell but at least it's unlimited