Shed a Tear: The Age of Broadband Caps Begins Monday

Eh let them cap it. I doubt I could download 150gb with AT&T as their DSL is just a small step above dial up here. I've been looking for other ways to get service here right now anyway because it is always slow.

Comcast is not looking so bad now huh. I get 30mbs for 29 dollars a month. Dsl or Uverse could not match that anyway.

I already canceled my account with at&t over this. The other day I got a check in the mail from them for over billing. I fought for nine months with them over this. Funny that it took me canceling my account to get my money back.

Being doing so in the UK for a while now.
Our top ISP is Virgin Media (Fibre Optic)
They had a max 20mb and if you used 3mb a day, you were capped to 2mb the rest of the day, this went from 9am till 9pm (I may be an odd hour or mb out here) and it sucked.

Now they have launched 50mb service and you can now download 50 gig a day, and nobody will trouble, you, 100 gig a day, no problem.

I can download 20/30/40+ a day, very easy.

My bill is now now CHEAPER also.........

Good times in the UK if you can access Virgin Media fibre optioc 50mb.
Even the 20 and 30 mb are pennies to buy and if you do a lot of latenight downloading of content (downloading when the cap isnt on) then it doesnt effect.

All good here.
Sorry to hear this.
Its a bit of an outrage, and again the good ol US of A sticks one to its people.
I dont know why you people put up with it. In the UK here we would take to the streets, as we do when we feel we need to. It lasts a day or so, then its back to high tea and scones and "pip pip old bean" and "oh the wedding, yes sirE"............ LOL

Originally posted by randomname
wtf, you're complaining. greedy cable and telephone company's in canada invented broadband caps. on top of that if they had 150G packages, they would charge $320 a month going by current rates.

its capped right now at 20G a month for basic internet service, which they bill you $49.

i think the 50G cap package it about $89 a month. and if you read their sales pitch, they make it sound like its the greatest deal on earth for serious internet, media users and professionals.

be thankful everything is still reasonable in america.

You sure about that? The CRTC is more or less being forced to remove the unreasonable caps put in place? Also who do you get internet from cause I pay around $60 for for 2 steps above basic internet and it is currently capped at 100GB which with downloading tv and movies streaming netflix etc. I never go over.

Best way to protest and give them what they deserve if dump the service, that is if you have other options locally. Other big net services, so far, had trial runs and such of regulation and deemed it unnecessary. Hopefully they will keep away from regulating the services. To not end up how TV is now.

Actually I live in Ottawa Ontario Canada...I have unlimited data transfer with my DSL service! The government also stepped in a few months back and said that Bell Canada and The CRTCs push to start capping all internet providers and re-billers would not be possible any time soon! HOORAH!

Originally posted by CanYouHandleTheTruth

Originally posted by BioStatistic
AT&T is a crap service. I can't wait to get my phone moved to Verizon. I'm glad I have a different ISP.

Seems like a stupid move to me...clearly, as shown by the above post, people will simply move to ISP's who have better internet plans.

don't worry about at@t.. their brain heads must have figured out this 'brilliant' move...time will show how at@t kicked themselves in the as*..

Lol share internet with your neighbors.

I already pay enough. If my ISP starts doing it I'll just cancle broadband and go back to dial up. I use broadband for gaming and if I can't game without extra charges theres no point in having it.

I see this as another reason not to become too dependent on cloud computing. In case you've had it with these ISP's and want to 'cut the cord' so to speak and cancel your service and 'go local' and just use your own computer and only access your own hard drives, CD's, DVD's, USB thumb drives - you'll be able to do so and not need and be dependent on some remote cloud run by a big corporation that you need to go through some other big corporation just to access that cloud.

They created that that 'cloud' term so people would have some idyllic image of some nice fluffy fair weather cumulus cloud that would never hurt them in mind when in fact it may be more like some menacing cumulonimbus thunder head cloud that's going to put you under its fierce wind thumb.

I'm from Australia as well.
Been capped for years with Optus, always has the highest plan with them. Was 20 gig peak, 40 gig off peak - midnight to midday.
The new plans count uploads as part of the package.
Was sick of the cap, dial up speed hurts, rang and asked how much to cancel my mobile, home line and Internet service with them.
Was a few months in credit on all plans, so couldn't kill the plans there and then.

Next month, I am on a 500 gig limit, no extra cost, no uploads counted.
No notification, just saw my limits were huge.
$60 a month for 500 gig, that's more in US dollars - our dollar is running at $1.08.

Worth having a whinge, means I can now download Linux distros without worrying about my cap.
Strange, but we were always jealous of unlimited in the US.
Now it seems we have better deals.

Hope this isn't an indication of a contracting economy for all you US people, a 150 gig cap will suck.
Just seems like another way to screw money out of the masses to feed the 'Too big to fail.'
'Too rich to fail' is what it should have been described as.
If they had been allowed to fail, you'd still have your house, a job and and be paying your loan to an administrator of the failed business.

Originally posted by BioStatistic
AT&T is a crap service. I can't wait to get my phone moved to Verizon. I'm glad I have a different ISP.

Stop fooling yourself. It will start with AT&T and move on from there. It makes no difference what company you choose to go with, if there is a way to make extra money, every single corp. will jump on board.

Just last month my local cable company, who also handles my internet, sent out a notice about how users can sign up, completely free of charge, to monitor their own internet usage. However, it was disguised as a perk for users. The notice went on to explain how virus's and spyware can increase the amount of broadband you use. So by signing up and monitoring your usage, you would be able to tell if your computer was infected or if others had access based on the amount of broadband used.

Now knowing the things I do and the things we see here at ATS and having an idea about future plans for the internet, I have no doubt this whole thing is about gauging people's internet usage so the company can plan the new coming pay scale.

reply to post by ~Lucidity


That happened to me before. My ISP called it a "Zombie computer". They said my computer was using more bandwidth in a day than it usually does in a month.

We have been capped with Comcast. My daughter came back home for a short bit during a major move. And she used her Netflix. I was biting my nails as our usage got closer to being shut off for the rest of the month. Netflix does use a lot of bandwidth. BTW, I pay nearly $200 a month for combined services. And no premium channels.

reply to post by SerenityGained
TOS prevents me from telling you what I think of your mentality. Wonder how long you will last when the planet goes completely primitive..Road Warrior grade. Think it's not coming..please remain where you are.

The 1% are those that use torrent sites to illegal freeload copyrighted content and then stream it to their personal units at the peril of all that just want to text, email and browse. So, you get to charge these idiots for something, but you are just beating up the messenger. i say do it as long as the bandwidth threshold they use does not interfere with what I pay for. Other than that, they can just suck, as they stagnantly do.

In new zealand a standard connection is 5-30gb for most houses... you americans were pretty damn lucky up until now!

Sometimes I wish I were a computer geek so I could fully understand what's going on in cyberspace. So, forgive me if this is ignorant because I have to ask: Aren't these cap companies shooting themselves in the feet? What I see is a time when the caps get ridiculous to the point where all the companies that rely on the internet will simply by their own servers. This will enable customers to dial directly into sites like Netflix, Google, Twitter...

reply to post by GhostR1der

But, some of us have FIOS in the house, which pretty much makes everything else a tel wire.
I can probably download all of New Zealand in a day, if I had the storage to hold it. Just like computers and networks, the availability is always way ahead of the demand. It breeds the power of manipulation, Just like oil, gas, electricity and big pharma drugs.