ISP's to limit usage?

[tmh8286]

I may have to go on a message board diet if my carrier decides to impliment this plan:

Internet provider's usage cap raises questions

NEW YORK (AP) -- Three months ago, Guy Distaffen switched Internet providers, lured from his cable company to his phone company by a year of free service on a two-year contract. But soon the company quietly updated its policies to say it would limit his Internet activity each month.

"We felt that were suckered," said Distaffen, who lives in the small village of Silver Springs in upstate New York.

The phone company, Frontier Communications Corp., is one of several Internet service providers that are moving to curb the growth of traffic on their networks, or at least make the subscribers who download the most pay more.

This could have consequences not just for consumers -- who would have to learn to watch how much data their Internet use entails -- but also for companies that hope to make the Internet a conduit for movies and other content that comes in huge files.

Cable companies have been at the forefront of imposing and talking about usage caps, because their lines are shared between households. Frontier's announcement is noteworthy because it is a phone company -- and it is matching a seemingly low ceiling set by a main cable rival: just 5 gigabytes per month [YIKES], the equivalent of about 3 DVD-quality movies.

"We go through that in a week," Distaffen said. "If they start enforcing the caps we're going to have to change service." Other subscribers on Broadbandreports.com, where the cap was first reported, echoed his feelings.

[tmh8286]

Compare that with this little pearl I found elsewhere:

US Median Broadband Speed 30 Times Slower than Japan's While Market Softens

eWeek brings two pieces of sobering news on the broadband front to our attention this week: much slower median speeds than other advanced nations, and a big shortfall in new customers.

The US may think of itself as a broadband leader, but that's a perception that doesn't fit the facts, suggests a new report from the Communication Workers of America (link in PDF format). Their SpeedMatters.org website offers a free upload/download test, and the data from that test was used to compare US broadband speeds with typical speeds for other countries. According to SpeedMatters, the US is 15th in the world in broadband speed, with a median speed of 2.3Mbps, compared to world leader Japan at 63Mbps, South Korea at 49Mbps, Finland at 21Mbps, France at 17Mbps, and even Canada at 7.6Mbps. Median upload speed in the US is just 435Kbps (corrected 8-15-08).

Don't blame me, by the way. I use Insight's 10.0 (10Mbps) broadband service, and the SpeedMatters test clocked my download speed at 9347Kbps, and my upload speed at 952Kbps, both very close to the rated maximums. The problem is that 10Mbps or faster speeds (Insight also offers 20Mbps service at an extra charge) are not typical in today's marketplace.

When I was researching broadband speeds for my latest book, I was stunned to discover that the traditional "cable's faster than DSL" factoid is fast becoming an urban legend. I found a number of cable broadband service providers offering tiered service at speeds comparable to DSL. For example, cable broadband provider WoWWay! offers four service tiers that are the same as AT&T's DSL offerings: 768Kbps/1.5Mbps/3Mbps/6Mbps. Road Runner offers a "Lite" service that runs at just 768Kbps, but also offers 3Mbps, 7Mbps, and 22Mbps (peak) services.

Some cable providers do a better job at offering fast services, though: Charter's three tiers run at 5Mbps, 10Mbps, and 15Mbps, while Insight runs at 10Mbps and 20Mbps. However, the current US speed champ appears to be Comcast, whose wideband service runs at 100Mbps, compared to 16Mbps for its next-fastest service.

From this sampling of DSL and cable Internet providers, it's easy to see what the problem is: the pipes in the US, with rare exceptions, aren't wide enough to post a serious challenge to other countries. The CWA has a vested interest, sure enough, in promoting better broadband infrastructure (it's spelled "J-O-B-S"), but faster broadband is in everyone's best interests. Whether you live for online gaming or make a living by working online, faster is better.

Unfortunately, another major broadband study, this one from Strategy Analytics, found that major broadband providers in both cable and DSL saw big shortfalls in new customers this spring. With slow tiered service the standard in most areas, new customers (who bring money to help pay for service improvements) becoming hard to find, and a substantial minority of people who simply aren't interested in broadband at any price, where will the money come from to build a faster Internet? Give us your opinion.

                         

[ron]

I'm glad Canada is starting to make up some of what was lost to Michael Phelps .

[tmh8286]

Real funny, ron - but how about those Japanese?  They may have lost W W 2, but they're killing us on the internet front.  Over sixty megs a second - that would be a pretty big pipe to have access to.