Reviews:
 ·Frontier Communi..
| reply to pnh102
Re: Why? said by pnh102:it is so cord-cutters like people on this site don't get terribly happy with services like Netflix, Crackle and Amazon Video.
A retired friend of mine is a cord cutter in love with his Roku. His usage totals typically run between 150GB and 200GB/mo. The highest month (when his Roku was new and the novelty hadn't worn off) was 230GB. He has all day to watch TV and I'd hazard a guess that his hourly streaming totals are way above the average, even for a cord cutter.
I don't like caps any more than the next guy but the reality of the situation is that very few users will run into them. So long as these users are such a small minority you can expect zero sympathy from John Q. Public, never mind any of the regulatory agencies in a position to actually do something about caps and network neutrality. |
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Gres7
join:2001-03-05
Brooklyn, NY | >>reality of the situation is that very few users will run into them.
200GB? C'mon that is just 1 (one) retired friend.
How much would household of 4-5 use? |
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 aaronwtPremium
join:2004-11-07
Woodbridge, VA
 ·Verizon FiOS
| reply to Crookshanks
said by Crookshanks:said by pnh102:it is so cord-cutters like people on this site don't get terribly happy with services like Netflix, Crackle and Amazon Video.
A retired friend of mine is a cord cutter in love with his Roku. His usage totals typically run between 150GB and 200GB/mo. The highest month (when his Roku was new and the novelty hadn't worn off) was 230GB. He has all day to watch TV and I'd hazard a guess that his hourly streaming totals are way above the average, even for a cord cutter. I don't like caps any more than the next guy but the reality of the situation is that very few users will run into them. So long as these users are such a small minority you can expect zero sympathy from John Q. Public, never mind any of the regulatory agencies in a position to actually do something about caps and network neutrality. Roku is only using lower bitrate streams for their content. Even Netflix 1080P HD content is only around 5Mb/s. Vudu three bar HDX is around 9Mb/s. But Roku doesn't offer VUDU on their devices.
And that is one person. So if you to take those amounts, what happens when you have a family of five, all using bandwidth daily? It can easily exceed those numbers.
Although I easily exceed 300GB just by myself. On just one day this month, when I was backing up some content to online storage, I used around 70GB. |
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 tshirtPremium,MVM
join:2004-07-11
Snohomish, WA
kudos:3
 ·Comcast
| reply to Gres7
said by Gres7: 200GB? C'mon that is just 1 (one) retired friend.
How much would household of 4-5 use?
Hopefully at least some of them have jobs/school/a life beyond the TV. |
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Reviews:
·Frontier Communi..
| reply to Gres7
His household has three people in it but that's besides the point. Explain to me why a household of four or five should pay the same as a household of one? Frankly I've never understood this argument as it relates to caps.
Each megabit that you require at a given time requires a certain infrastructure investment on the part of your ISP. Likewise, each kilowatt of electrical demand (not kilowatt-hour, there is a difference) requires a certain infrastructure investment on the part of your power utility. The power grid could not handle every house in your neighborhood simultaneously attempting to draw 200 amps. It's absurd to expect any ISP to build out residential infrastructure at a 1 to 1 contention ratio.
Imposing byte caps is not the best way for ISPs to deal with bandwidth demand but it is the easiest for consumers to understand. 95% percentile billing would make more sense but you'd have a very hard time trying to explain it to the non-geeks. |
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Reviews:
·Frontier Communi..
| reply to aaronwt
said by aaronwt:And that is one person. So if you to take those amounts, what happens when you have a family of five, all using bandwidth daily? It can easily exceed those numbers. See my reply above for my answer to this question.
said by aaronwt:Although I easily exceed 300GB just by myself. On just one day this month, when I was backing up some content to online storage, I used around 70GB.
And I regularly use >10GB/mo on my cell phone plan (thank god for grandfathered unlimited data) and have reached 600GB/mo before on my wireline. What's the point? Neither one of us is a "typical" user. You can't take numbers like that and apply them to John Q. Public. |
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aaronwtPremium
join:2004-11-07
Woodbridge, VA Reviews:
·Verizon FiOS
| reply to Crookshanks
said by Crookshanks:His household has three people in it but that's besides the point. Explain to me why a household of four or five should pay the same as a household of one? Frankly I've never understood this argument as it relates to caps.
Each megabit that you require at a given time requires a certain infrastructure investment on the part of your ISP. Likewise, each kilowatt of electrical demand (not kilowatt-hour, there is a difference) requires a certain infrastructure investment on the part of your power utility. The power grid could not handle every house in your neighborhood simultaneously attempting to draw 200 amps. It's absurd to expect any ISP to build out residential infrastructure at a 1 to 1 contention ratio.
Imposing byte caps is not the best way for ISPs to deal with bandwidth demand but it is the easiest for consumers to understand. 95% percentile billing would make more sense but you'd have a very hard time trying to explain it to the non-geeks.
Since you mention the electric comapny, the easiest billing method to understand would be like how the electric company bills. You pay for what you use.
Then people who use a little would only pay a little. And people who use alot would pay more.
if anything, having a cap is a detriment to the people who use very little bandwidth. Since a person who only uses 50GB a month will be paying the same amount as a person who uses 250GB. (Of course assuming they are on the same speed tier) |
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aaronwtPremium
join:2004-11-07
Woodbridge, VA Reviews:
·Verizon FiOS
| reply to Crookshanks
said by Crookshanks:said by aaronwt:And that is one person. So if you to take those amounts, what happens when you have a family of five, all using bandwidth daily? It can easily exceed those numbers. See my reply above for my answer to this question. said by aaronwt:Although I easily exceed 300GB just by myself. On just one day this month, when I was backing up some content to online storage, I used around 70GB.
And I regularly use >10GB/mo on my cell phone plan (thank god for grandfathered unlimited data) and have reached 600GB/mo before on my wireline. What's the point? Neither one of us is a "typical" user. You can't take numbers like that and apply them to John Q. Public. I'm taking those numbers and comparing them to families of 4, 5, and 6 that I know. They all easily exceed 300GB in every month. With each user, especially the kids, streamig content to their many electronic devices every day while at home. |
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 jmn1207Premium
join:2000-07-19
Ashburn, VA
kudos:1 | reply to Crookshanks
Caps are simply used as a method to help ensure that nothing innovative can be created that will jeopardize the existing antiquated, consumer-unfriendly distribution method.
Even where a content creator is not also a TV provider, we are seeing increasing moves to paywalls and other artificial restrictions that serve no other purpose but to maintain an overreaching control and to keep consumers from gaining any real leverage like they should in any legitimate free market.
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Reviews:
·Frontier Communi..
| reply to aaronwt
said by aaronwt:Since you mention the electric comapny, the easiest billing method to understand would be like how the electric company bills. You pay for what you use.
Then people who use a little would only pay a little. And people who use alot would pay more. There is still a base monthly charge to cover the costs of the connection to the grid, meter maintenance, etc. Where I used to live that charge was $16/mo and accounted for more than a third of my total electric bill.
said by aaronwt:if anything, having a cap is a detriment to the people who use very little bandwidth. Since a person who only uses 50GB a month will be paying the same amount as a person who uses 250GB. (Of course assuming they are on the same speed tier)
I agree, caps are stupid. That's why I said percentile billing makes more sense. Someone who uses 256kbit/s 24/7 places less of a burden on the network than someone who uses 7.5mbit/s for 24 hours. Both consume the same number of bytes but the latter requires a greater infrastructure investment on the part of the ISP.
The major advantage to caps is they are easier for the end user to understand. They are also set high enough that they impact a very small percentage of the total customer base. |
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Reviews:
·Frontier Communi..
| reply to aaronwt
said by aaronwt:I'm taking those numbers and comparing them to families of 4, 5, and 6 that I know. They all easily exceed 300GB in every month. With each user, especially the kids, streamig content to their many electronic devices every day while at home.
You still haven't answered my question about why this should matter? A household of six should pay the same as a household of one? Why? |
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Reviews:
·Frontier Communi..
1 edit | reply to jmn1207
I don't agree with your view of the situation but even if I did why should I care? Television is not a life essential service. People around here gripe about the ever increasing cost of cable TV but very few of them are willing to cut the cord. Why is that? There are a million things you can do to entertain yourself that are cheaper, more rewarding, and better for your health than watching TV. |
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| reply to Crookshanks
If there are truly so few users "demanding" so much bandwidth throughout their network, then there is absolutely no need for the cap as it does nothing to address the supposed bandwidth crunch.
Caps are not about those that use more pay more. If that was the case they would have a set connection fee, deliver all the speed they can to every user (no need for tiers) and then charge per GB to begin with so that those that dont use any or very little pay much less and those that use a lot more pay much more.
It cost a cable company virtually nothing to provide you 30MB service compared to a 5MB service. The only issue may be node saturation, which is less likely if you have everyone getting what they need and getting off as quick as possible. Those that are going to then argue that doing so will cause too many full time streamers from saturating the node need to see paragraph one (which is one of your own arguments). |
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| reply to Crookshanks
So should a household of 6 pay more than a household of one when it comes to phone service and TV service?
But to answer your silly question, Yes they should pay the same as it cost them virtually nothing to provide a household of 6 (or 1) with 1TB of data use a month over a household of 6 (or 1) that uses 10GB a month. |
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aaronwtPremium
join:2004-11-07
Woodbridge, VA Reviews:
·Verizon FiOS
| reply to Crookshanks
said by Crookshanks:said by aaronwt:I'm taking those numbers and comparing them to families of 4, 5, and 6 that I know. They all easily exceed 300GB in every month. With each user, especially the kids, streamig content to their many electronic devices every day while at home.
You still haven't answered my question about why this should matter? A household of six should pay the same as a household of one? Why? Just like electrcity, it doesn't matter how many people live there. Or phone service or Tv service. |
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Reviews:
·Frontier Communi..
| reply to Skippy25
said by Skippy25:If there are truly so few users "demanding" so much bandwidth throughout their network, then there is absolutely no need for the cap as it does nothing to address the supposed bandwidth crunch. Sure it does, it's just a bludgeon instead of a scalpel. Burstable billing would do a better job, but as I've repeatedly said, good luck explaining it to John Q. Public. Billing off-peak consumption separately (or just making it unlimited) would help some and would be easy enough to explain to the average user. I'd hazard a guess that you'll see this sooner or later, probably in wireless before wireline.
said by Skippy25:It cost a cable company virtually nothing to provide you 30MB service compared to a 5MB service. What is your basis for this conclusion?
said by Skippy25:The only issue may be node saturation You mean to say that actual constraints on deliverable bandwidth exist?!? Say it isn't so!
said by Skippy25:Those that are going to then argue that doing so will cause too many full time streamers from saturating the node need to see paragraph one (which is one of your own arguments).
I'm not arguing anything other than each additional bit of bandwidth demand (not total byte consumption, they are not the same) requires further investment on the part of the ISP. As you push your average bitrate higher the ISP has to invest more into its infrastructure to ensure that the contention ratio remains low enough for every customer to enjoy an acceptable level of service. |
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rradina
join:2000-08-08
Chesterfield, MO | reply to Crookshanks
If you don't care, why are you posting arguments? |
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Reviews:
·Frontier Communi..
| reply to aaronwt
said by aaronwt:Just like electrcity, it doesn't matter how many people live there. Uhh, yes it does, unless you can make your household of six use the same amount of electricity as a household of one.
Phone service does cost more unless you have an unlimited long distance plan. Such plans are only possible because of the ridiculously low bandwidth requirements for voice. Even at that you'll still pay more for wireless service for a large household, unless each household member is willing to share the same phone. Ditto for wireline service if you need the ability to make simultaneous calls.
Bad analogy, it doesn't require additional infrastructure to feed multiple television sets. Television is a one-to-many broadcast medium. Data delivery is almost uniformly unicast, and you can not dispute the fact that a higher average bitrate requires a larger infrastructure investment on the part of the ISP. |
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| reply to Crookshanks
5% max allowable utilization is not "high" by any definition. And your percentile billing doesn't make sense unless costs are actually tied to expenses. I.e. a "cap" on Comcast's profit. |
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| reply to Crookshanks
My basis is my knowledge and expertise of networks.
Their entire network can sit there turned on and unused and the cost of its operation compared to full capacity (80% utilization) would be marginal. This has been discussed many times.
Actual bandwidth per user may suffer a little, but to a noticeable degree that would cause an issue? No, unless you are doing a speed test at the time when a large % of people are streaming at the same time on the same node. But all you guys say it is such a small %, so it is a none factor right? If the constraint is so great that it causes a noticeable difference for an extended period of time, then their network is inferior to begin with and has issues that need to be addressed. |
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