Cable Broadband Users, Get Ready For Overage Fees

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Interesting Article.

"Time Warner Cable and Comcast agree that "bandwidth hogs" make up a very small portion of their overall subscriber base. Comcast pegs the number of bandwidth hogs as the top 0.1% of their user base (14,000 customers out of Comcast's 14.1 million users). Time Warner Cable argues that 5% of their subscribers utilize over half of the total network bandwidth. So why would TWC want to impose a 5GB cap on lower-tier users?"

I can see their (Cable's) points. The majority should NOT have a slower internet connection because a select minority are going crazy using their connect for evil instead of good.

That being said, that article is RIGHT ON. We all know every company is just trying to make money. It's how america spins. And with VERY limited choices for internet, this could end up being a VERY bad thing for consumers in a few years.

That's why I think we really need to get more competition in the (Orlando) local market. Embark and AT&T need to start offering the Triple Combo packages that can compete with Brighthouse. And if Verizon could get a Cable-License to compete...even better.

I know it costs ALOT to build a high-end network from scratch....but....when you only have 2 choices, the competition just won't be there.....and without competition...things could get nasty fast!
 
Cell phone companies have been doing this forever. Sat companies have been doing this forever. Commercial fiber lines have been doing this forever. Its only natural that cable broadband will follow suite eventually. And as the article says only .1% of Comcasts customers would be affected by this the rest can continue as normal. 50$ for an unlimited 10 or 15mbit pipe is unrealistic. It costs from a good provider at least 10$ per 1mbit (with a commit of at least 50-100mbit).

These companies already have "caps" if you want to call them that, they just are not upfront about them. At least now they will be upfront.
 
I'm not that worried about this as I believe the cap would be fair for nearly all users. I use tons of bandwidth but not even close to the range of 250GB of data per month. People for the most part really don't understand "just how much" 250GB of data is per month because its a very large amount of download you need to be doing day in and day out. I think torrenters should be far more worried about an upload cap than a download cap IMO.

Now if the cap is like 25GB or even 50GB and I'm paying 50 bucks a month I might have a problem with that because I "could" reach that amount in a month. Also even with an overage charge system in place I bet they might have a one month grace before they bill. You could have one month reaching the cap by pure crazy usage but once you have a second month its reaching a normal consistent activity type of usage. Bandwidth does cost money and that kinda bandwidth cannot be provided month after month at 50 or even 60 bucks a month even for the few. If this becomes a problem I could also see high bandwidth users given the option to pay say 80 bucks a month and say go nuts. I think that might be enough of a cost to keep those customers. Also worst case is they breach the contract for excessive use which is in their terms of service and say sorry we have to let you go.

I'm more impressed with the fact that companies are more willing to setup an overage billing model compared to just dumping those customers so I'll give them credit for that because I'm still quite amazed they haven't let them go.
 
The question is...will they set the caps to curb abusers or to make revenue. If it is the latter--and probably will be, you well may get hit. If it were me, I'd set the overage fee so 25% of customers had to pay, call them "over users," rather than set it so 1% of users pay extra.

It's like bank overdrafts and credit card charges. They are there to make extra revenue.
 
Well im not sure at first its to make more money, but to stop abuse on the network. .1% (not 1% like you said) uses the majority of the network. Here in Orlando the numbers are somewhere around 2% of the users use 80% of the network. If the caps are as high as they say, 99.8% of the users will not even notice
 
stevenl said:
Well im not sure at first its to make more money, but to stop abuse on the network. .1% (not 1% like you said) uses the majority of the network. Here in Orlando the numbers are somewhere around 2% of the users use 80% of the network. If the caps are as high as they say, 99.8% of the users will not even notice
Click to expand...

And who wants to bet that .1% are downloading/doing something illegal with it too?
 
More then likely it is illegal stuff that are downloading. I run several web servers that get ALOT of traffic and they barely break 500gb a month each. These are being used by thousands of people a month. So 1 person should be able to stay below 250 with no problem.
 
If they were to start applying an cap and start charging overage fees, wouldn't they need to have a facility for the users to check their usage?
 
That they should. If they do it in the open and are clear in what the 'limits' and 'charges' are as much as I think it'd suck I could not be upset. Because it would be my choice to stay.
 

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