Charter Communications bringing usage caps to cable modem service this month.

Charter sucks. Period. I just dumped their vastly over-priced TV 'service' (saving over $600 this year with a competitor!) but am stuck with their internet until someone better comes to this area. Man, I can't wait to dump them completely...
 
[quote name='Dr Mario Kart']You're making it sound like a constitutional issue rather than, for example, a phone company billing you for overage charges once you exceed the minutes on your cell phone plan.

As I use more than X electricity, the rate goes up. My computer doesnt work without electricity. Restriction of freedom!
It turns out none of our so called freedoms are absolute and have at least some restrictions on them.

With that said, monopolies are certainly bad. It would be great if another company saw that there was a market for cheaper unlimited and could move in and start taking marketshare. If not, thems the breaks, short of government regulation of course (oh noes)[/quote]

The grief I have with it is that 1)the U.S. gets ripped off when it comes to internet services compared to the UK and Japan. And 2) a capped service isn't what people signed up for. If you are a current subscriber who signed up for unlimited internet you should be grandfathered in but that's not the case. You are getting capped anyway.
 
Number 2 there would really only matter if there were contracts. Since you can cancel at anytime with no penalty it's not relevant.

It sucks, as many people have no other broadband option, but since there's not contract people didn't "sign up" for anything so they can change whatever they want as people can cancel if they don't like it.
 
^Multi-year subscriptions are an option with the comcast in my area. Maybe not with charter, we don't have them around here I'm not sure. For a while comcast was giving away Wiis to people who signed up for a min. of 2 years service.

But yeah being able to cancel at anytime brings up grief number 3. Even if you cancel most companies are a monopoly and there is no other option.
 
[quote name='Dr Mario Kart']
As I use more than X electricity, the rate goes up. My computer doesnt work without electricity. Restriction of freedom![/quote]
Your electric company doesn't cap your electricity usage. They bill you per KWh. If cable companies want to move strictly to per GB billing (they sure as hell don't since the vast majority of people would probably end up paying less than they currently do), it would be comparable.

And yeah, cable contracts exist. I save a decent amount by having a 2 year contract with Time Warner, which means I get to avoid any annual increase in costs over 5%, but I also have a nice fee for termination.
 
I'd never heard of the contracts. I save money buy calling once a year and threatening to leave for satellite.

We get cable (basic, digital and HD) with HBO and Starz and internet for $78 a month after tax and fees currently.
 
[quote name='botticus']Your electric company doesn't cap your electricity usage. They bill you per KWh. If cable companies want to move strictly to per GB billing (they sure as hell don't since the vast majority of people would probably end up paying less than they currently do), it would be comparable.

And yeah, cable contracts exist. I save a decent amount by having a 2 year contract with Time Warner, which means I get to avoid any annual increase in costs over 5%, but I also have a nice fee for termination.[/QUOTE]


Problem being is that cable prices are ridiculously overpriced to constitute capped or pay per use bandwidth. Its rare that any of my utilities will exceed my cable bill in any given month (give maybe 2-3 months out of the year). I think its good that Charter has additional options that increase the cap or provide unlimited bandwidth, but many areas only have the 5/1 not to mention that there is little to no competition in many areas. To me its almost like racketeering because there are few alternatives. This should be illegal in any market where Charter or any other company has a monopoly.
 
My old roommate still works at Charter in the corporate office and I worked there for 3 years doing internet/phone tech support at Charter Commons in Town and Country, MO (the 7th layer of hell) from May 03-Sept. 06 so I will try to defend here.

I am in a ATT exclusive apartment complex in South County that has wiring so old, the 1.5 Meg down speed is the max I can get. I would kill to get Charter's 15 Meg connection, even with this cap.

Charter has worked very hard over the last year to get their HD, data, and phone technology to the level it should be at. Charter is the first cable carrier to get the DOCSIS 3.0 service (FIOS speed) out to the public for sale. Independent reports show Charter's tech infrastructure to be the best of any of the cable companies. They also have an HDTV lineup that rivals DirecTV/Dish and has less compression/better quality than Comcast's. Their new Moxi DVR's are very good, but are REALLY hard to get. My former roommate had to use his connections to get one. Problem is they have so much debt from their lowsy executives from 00-06 that the hole may be too big to dig out of.

Also if Charter's service is intermittent or not working even after multiple tech visits/mainline calls, then by all means switch. I had to deal with those issues hundreds of times and don't blame anybody for switching.

My feeling is Charter's cap is not too bad, at least for the 15 meg level. It's the same size as Comcast's, and as long as you're not doing bit torrent stuff, you should be fine. Now ATT will have a cap, it's just a matter of when and what size. From the rumbling's I heard a few months ago on DSL Reports, it's probably going to be much smaller than the Charter/Comcast ones.
 
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[quote name='homeland']Can we stop now talking about Digital distribution for the "next gen".. having ISP do this, really makes the arguement moot.[/quote]

This is so true; no one ever mentions it when it comes to arguments over physical/digital distribution.

The other thing no one else mentions is 1/4 to 1/2 of the US doesn't even have broadband as an option. My parents are in rural southern Illinois, 30 minutes southeast of Southern Illinois University. Their internet options are dialup or satellite internet that ranges from $50-$100 per month.

Wildblue satellite internet is what they use, the $50/month base package. Info is here: http://wildblue.com/getWildblue/details.jsp There are so many users there, they no longer do installations there.

How would you like those caps; 7.5 GB-17 GB per month? The fastest option has the same speed (1.5 Mbps down) I pay for but at $100/month vs. $29/month.
 
Don't complaint about those caps, you have it good. I've already been paying $35/month for my local cable company, at a whopping speed of 768kps (unlimited downloading). However, they just recently upped the speed to 1Mb/s, which I was extremely happy about until I saw they are now putting a 20GB/month limit on the downloading. I can easily hit the amount in no time between PS3 demos, games, gametap, and other gaming services. Unfortunately, there is no other company in my area to go to. I can get their 6Mb/s service for another $15 a month and the cap is raised to 50GB/month, but I'm so fed up with them I can stand the idea of giving them more money. These monopolies need to be stopped, and competition needs to be started in these areas. Everyone should at least have 3 or more options, as the more regulations and caps put on users, the less likely people will use online renting sites and gaming sites like Valve...which will cause a lot of jobs to be lost. They are only further killing the country for their own benefit.
 
I think the biggest issue is not knowing where you are at and how close you are to the cap.

I wouldn't mind at all if my cable bill kinda had a record of how much we are using daily and or weeky/monthly.

Then I can judge or at least know when I'm doing too much.

100gb in a month isn't that big. a few demos, valve updates, various other downloads...

it'd just be interesting to know that figure.

Before they enact this, they better allow the customer to disply at least a nightly quota number.
 
[quote name='crystalklear64']Are there any "good" isp's?

I've never heard anyone say that they are 100% happy with their isp.[/QUOTE]

Cox Communications (lololol) is decent, but I think they're mostly in New England.
 
[quote name='crystalklear64']Are there any "good" isp's?

I've never heard anyone say that they are 100% happy with their isp.[/QUOTE]


I was happy with Earthlink back in the day, but that was 10 years ago.

I think the only way to really be happy with an ISP is one that provides local service, but those are coming far and few between.
 
[quote name='Dead of Knight']Cox Communications (lololol) is decent, but I think they're mostly in New England.[/QUOTE]

Cox is fucking horrible. They were restricting bandwidth years ago when my dad had them and claimed it was due to "local heavy usage" by others when the neighbor was getting double speeds just because my dad was downloading a lot. Cox is a bunch of coxsuckers and rather pricey to boot.
 
[quote name='Monsta Mack']Cox is fucking horrible. They were restricting bandwidth years ago when my dad had them and claimed it was due to "local heavy usage" by others when the neighbor was getting double speeds just because my dad was downloading a lot. Cox is a bunch of coxsuckers and rather pricey to boot.[/QUOTE]

Hmm. Didn't know that. They were decent when I had them back when I lived with my parents before college. I rescind my comments.
 
[quote name='Monsta Mack']Cox is fucking horrible. They were restricting bandwidth years ago when my dad had them and claimed it was due to "local heavy usage" by others when the neighbor was getting double speeds just because my dad was downloading a lot. Cox is a bunch of coxsuckers and rather pricey to boot.[/quote]

my maxed out ever other night Usenet reader begs to differ. I loved Cox, fastest ISP i've ever had and I sorely miss it. TW/Road Runner sucks. It now takes 20 minutes to d/l 1.1 gigs ..
 
250GB is a lot. I streamed TV shows, downloaded mp3, TV series, and games and do online gaming and havent reach that yet.
 
[quote name='62t']250GB is a lot. I streamed TV shows, downloaded mp3, TV series, and games and do online gaming and havent reach that yet.[/quote]

How do you know how much you have dl?
 
My employer beats Cox all the time.

...

Charter announcing caps is a desperate attempt to get more money from their subscribers.

They're going bankrupt. (Rumor: Some of their employees haven't been paid in the last few weeks.)

Those caps truly affecting has the same probability of you being eaten by a live T-Rex.
 
My internet usage for January was over 600GB... but I'm probably in the minority. :lol:

Comcast called me and told me to check my wireless security because if I go over 250GB again, I'm done for a year.

I asked them how I'm supposed to know how much I used and he told me to google it. :lol: Comcost's honestly to go solution is to look up bandwidth monitoring programs, install them on all your PCs and monitor them. Back in August when they first announced they were enforcing the caps, they said they were working on a bandwidth meter that would be ready by November when they would start monitoring the cap. It's now February and they don't have it in place. Best of all, it's a combined cap for both up and down stream.

The moment FIOS hits MN, I'm so fucking gone.

Could be worse though, my mom can only get satellite with a 7GB cap.
 
That is one thing that I don't understand, how do they expect customers to know how much bandwidth they are consuming unless they provide a bandwidth monitor themselves? I guess they're expecting if you're downloading over 200 GB of data a month you should be savvy enough to monitor your bandwidth, but that's a pretty poor excuse. I would keep complaining until they provide a solution; if they're going to impose a cap they need to provide a convenient way to monitor it.

This is akin to a cell phone company not providing how many minutes you've used in a given month.

Of course, if you have a compatible router you could use Tomato, but that shouldn't be the real solution to the problem. I bet most people wouldn't even know how to setup third-party firmware on their routers.
 
again, the biggest issue to this is getting metered on something you have no visibility of it.

it's like the electric company or the water bill comes in and you have no idea what's your use.. you just get a fixed dollar amount bill and they threaten you with shutting you off if you obtain a certain amount.

this is horrible.

I know there are new routers out there that do have a bandwidth counter on it. Both for up and down.

http://catalog.belkin.com/IWCatProductPage.process?Product_Id=377018
 
[quote name='Kayden']

Could be worse though, my mom can only get satellite with a 7GB cap.[/QUOTE]


Oh wow I had no idea the satellite carriers capped...

She can get cell phone uncapped, Sprint and Alltel both offer it..
 
[quote name='doho7744']Cox has a 40gb limit in AZ, they have'nt tried to enforce it yet. They snuck it in the eula like a year ago.[/quote]
Really? Good thing, since I download way over 40 GB a month.
 
[quote name='Snake2715']Oh wow I had no idea the satellite carriers capped...

She can get cell phone uncapped, Sprint and Alltel both offer it..[/QUOTE]

I'd suspect that most places where satelitte internet is the only option (i.e. no cable, DSL, Fios) are generally also outside of 3G/EVDO etc. cell phone internet networks.

Hell at my parents can't use cell phone period at their house as they don't get reception--have to drive 10-15 minutes to get signal.
 
[quote name='dmaul1114']I'd suspect that most places where satelitte internet is the only option (i.e. no cable, DSL, Fios) are generally also outside of 3G/EVDO etc. cell phone internet networks.

Hell at my parents can't use cell phone period at their house as they don't get reception--have to drive 10-15 minutes to get signal.[/QUOTE]


Sadly not true here in Michigan.

And yes we are the 7th most populated state in the U.S. so its not just some small population thing.

I live 22 mins north of Lansing (our wonderful state capital....) and I am forced to get Satellite to have anything other than OTA. Verizon owns the telephone lines out there so I am forced to pay their $70 a month charge for a home phone (+ $35 for 56k dial up) or go without one.. I choose the latter.

$60 a month I get ~DSL speeds on a 3g network Alltel which were backing up on Sprints towers and since the Alltel / Verizon merger are using Verizons towers...

I get 800k-1.2mbs download all day long for the most part.

Our cells work great as well, but I just jumped ship to Sprint for the cell service due to the merger and my dislike for Verizon. My net contract is up in August and I will probably jump to Sprint for that as well.
 
But that was my point. You live close enough to a city (Lansing) to at least be able to get 3G service. Lots of places that don't have cable or DSL are also way out of range af 3G/EVDO etc., so at least you have that option rather than only satellite for internet as it is for many people who have no option for cable/dsl.
 
[quote name='Snake2715']Oh wow I had no idea the satellite carriers capped...

She can get cell phone uncapped, Sprint and Alltel both offer it..[/quote]Sprint doesn't allow for uncapped cell phone usage. 5GB/mo is their limit, and that's it.

Now that Alltel is part of Verizon, they're under the same restrictions, which is 5GB/mo usage.
 
[quote name='shrike4242']Sprint doesn't allow for uncapped cell phone usage. 5GB/mo is their limit, and that's it.

Now that Alltel is part of Verizon, they're under the same restrictions, which is 5GB/mo usage.[/QUOTE]

well we will see when that happens.

My signed contract says unlimted data at alltel and I have nothing from alltel to say differently.

Sprint phones come with unlimited data and you can normally tether them pretty easy, I have my instinct already tethered multiple times. So technically thats unlimited as well.

But yeah the reason we went with Alltel was due to unlimted compared to the other carriers.
 
I don't know if it's accurate or not, but if you download Google Desktop, there's a widget called Laptop Check by Krid of K. It has a counter of how much bandwith passes in and out. So far in three months, I've used 32GB. Might be helpful for those of you who know your caps. I need to ask my father what AT&T's cap is. This isn't a 10th of what I can do, but since I'm not paying and there's 5 other people watching youtube, listening to iTunes, and playing games, I'm not going to get the whole house banned from our ISP.
 
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