Broadband Capping - Why?

LegacyUser · 22-07-2001 12:52pm #1

I'm still trying to get my head around download limits on broadband.

Why would providers want to impose a limit - is this just a way of getting extra money from users, or are there technical reasons for it e.g. spreading demand and preventing users from hogging bandwidth?

What exactly does a 3Gig limit, for example, mean in practice?

Take my own usage with SNL.

I have a shared connection at home used by myself, my son and my daughter. Our 'rough and ready' usage in a week would be something like this:

Me:
3 hours per week general surfing
7 hours per week on usenet
6 hours per week online gaming (I'm a big Age of Empires fan

)
About 10 mb software downloads, mainly software updates, drivers, patches etc.

My Daughter
15 hours per week surfing and chatrooms
20 mb per week software (mainly using a well known programme starting with letter 'N'

)

My Son
5 hours per week general surfing
10 hours per week online gaming (Quake type games)
10 mb per week software downloads (mainly trial games and software updates/patches.

Bear in mind that a lot of the above happens simultaneously.

Anyone able to give me an idea what this would equate to in total download usage per month, ignoring the fact that I tend to avoid sites using video at present ?

I realise that the software download figures above add up to about 200mb per month but I haven't a clue how surfing and gaming convert to download.

Martin

[This message has been edited by o_donnel_abu (edited 22-07-2001).]

LegacyUser · 22-07-2001 1:03pm

I realise that the software download figures above add up to about 200mb per month but I haven't a clue how surfing and gaming convert to download.

Just take a look at that 2screen thingy on toolbar at the end of a surfing/gaming session. It can tell u how much bytes u have received for that session. Gaming can take a good lot, but it depends on the game, Quake type games are hungry

LegacyUser · 22-07-2001 1:22pm

as ive shown in a previous topic your only looking at the same speed for 50 users as a 2mb leased line BUT at twice the rpice, so eircon are getting twice the moeny for their bandwidth, there is no economical reason for a download limit at the prices eircon have suggested and the config that will use,
the only reason is to get as much money form the end user,
and i thank you for mentioning the extreme anti feeling towards a cap to the odtr and eircon

[This message has been edited by Gladiator (edited 22-07-2001).]

LegacyUser · 22-07-2001 1:38pm

We should not be aiming for a "capped" DSL service. It should be flat-rate and comparable to other countries. We should try to find out what price Eircom is requiring for reasonably fast (>= 512kbs) flat-rate (i.e. non-capped) DSL. We should aim high here. People seem to take it for granted that we are supposed to have worse service than other countries in Europe.

Another question - and this was raised at the meeting: On what basis will Eircom be offering DSL on a wholesale basis to other ISPs (i.e. flat-rate or per-megabyte)?

LegacyUser · 22-07-2001 1:45pm

Originally posted by o_donnel_abu:

Why would providers want to impose a limit - is this just a way of getting extra money from users, or are there technical reasons for it e.g. spreading demand and preventing users from hogging bandwidth?

ISP end:
Most ISP types will tell you that the reason they like to impose caps on broadband is because of the infamous 80:20 rule:- 20% of the users will use 80% of the bandwidth. I can vouch for this - Verizon's stats for residential users are shocking. about 1 or 2 percent of their users will download 300mb a day - mostly in Warez and on Napster. Compare that to the average across the board of about 25mb/day.

These users aren't so big a problem at peak times, as everyone is choked to about 60-200k anyway, but, off peak, they slow the service down for everyone.

As someone stated on ie.comp the other day, "Bandwidth Costs Money!" - every ISP in the country would go out of business if they were expected to provide 10gb (300mb/day x 30 days) of bandwidth per customer, per month, for IEP15. In other countries they just suffer the heavy users in the knowledge that they can subsidise them with the users who d/l 10mb/day...

A 1 gig limit is enough to persuade much, if not most, of that (heavily loss-making) 20% to choose a different ISP.

So, in that respect there is a rational logic for capping - ISPs are entitled to reject a customer that they don't believe they can make money on. If they are willing to take on those customers, for whatever reason (marketing

Unlimited Service!), goodwill etc.), they are equally entitled to do so.

Telco end
There is far less of an argument for capping DSL than for other forms of broadband. Cable and FWA both suffer from having low absolute limits to the amount of bandwidth provided - eg: only about 2mb/s can be provided over a coaxial cable TV hookup. Limiting users of these services makes perfect sense, since everything would slow to a crawl if they didn't. With DSL, the only limiting factor is the quality of the copper pair. Contention ratios can be changed by changing the backhaul from the exchange, with essentially no upper limit. A Telco could, if they chose to, provide every customer with their own 512k connection, with no overbooking. (going above 512k without overbooking is more difficult)

[This message has been edited by hudson806 (edited 22-07-2001).]

LegacyUser · 22-07-2001 1:45pm

Originally posted by Skeptic1:
We should not be aiming for a "capped" DSL service. It should be flat-rate and comparable to other countries.

Agree totally, I'm just trying to figure out whether there is any *rational* logic for capping.

Another question - and this was raised at the meeting: On what basis will Eircom be offering DSL on a wholesale basis to other ISPs (i.e. flat-rate or per-megabyte)?

They refused to give us any information on prices, just that they are lodging them with ODTR next week so they should be in public domain fairly soon.

Martin

LegacyUser · 22-07-2001 2:34pm

Originally posted by hudson806:
As someone stated on ie.comp the other day, "Bandwidth Costs Money!" - every ISP in the country would go out of business if they were expected to provide 10gb (300mb/day x 30 days) of bandwidth per customer, per month, for IEP15. In other countries they just suffer the heavy users in the knowledge that they can subsidise them with the users who d/l 10mb/day...

I have a few questions at this point:

1. Is this what is known as 'bitstream' unbundling?

2. Will Eircom be the sole provider of bandwidth to the exchanges?

3. If 2., will Eircom be free to charge for this bandwidth on whatever basis they choose?

4. On what basis does the DSL provider charge ISPs for bandwidth in other countries?

I am aware that bandwidth pricing is complex and not strictly flat-rate but, to a large extent, the customer is purchasing capacity rather than bits. The basis on which Eircom charge ISPs will largely determine the type of ADSL service we get.

LegacyUser · 22-07-2001 2:41pm

Skeptic1, bitstream is were eircon has control over the exchange and rents the equipment to a teleco, this sounds alot like what eircon are doing, but brings us
to my question isthe wholesale price, LLU

o_donnel_abu there is no rational cap,
A cap in any form is totaly unexceptable,

Its is a total disgrace, at 70 pounds a month they are lining their pockets, you would want to be be some heavy heavy user with some HUGE hard drive space to actually coast them money,
maybe .5% of users,

The hole point of Broadband is it isnt capped, your reaching into the heart of it and stiping it bear,

Its the Exact Same as ISDN, nothing will changes it will be overly expensive and lead to huge bills, it will not change the internet in ireland one bit,

How i think we should decided Now weather or not its unmetered access were going to fight for.

Some of you say, ah 5gbs is exceptable, and you have to be a sad ******* to download more then that, well as the internet advance more and more things are getting bigger and bigger, 5gbs may soon not be enough once you get usered to the interent, then try and force Eircon to excreass it.

No i say the only exceptable limit, and i still feel at their price there souldnt be one, like some other isps have,

its in the contract if you download 4 or 5 times the what the average user does in a month, you service can be discontinued, after a warning,

This way eircon can cover their **** from abusive user, but one problem this wont make them any extra money,
If they really only wanted to protect bandwidth they would do this, it allso has the benefit that the cap keeps up with changes in the internet as more people use it and download more stuff,

at least chorus doesnt try and hide whay they have a cap,

So lets take a vote on the board on what our offical stance on a cap is, its time to get our cards on the table

Options
1)NO Cap in any way shape or form is exceptable

2)A Cap of 5 times the average user downbloads for the month in question,
2 warning within the space of say 6 month and the service is stopped,

3)a fixed limit, 2 warning within the space of say 6 month and the service is stopped

4) a fixed limit, and a charge for every additional MB

I Vote we work towards one but except 2 depending on the terms

[This message has been edited by Gladiator (edited 22-07-2001).]

LegacyUser · 22-07-2001 2:41pm

Originally posted by o_donnel_abu:

I realise that the software download figures above add up to about 200mb per month but I haven't a clue how surfing and gaming convert to download.

If you check the two screens at the bottom right of your taskbar you'll see how much you've dloaded/uploaded...Having played Games a lot while on SNL i found that they use up your full bandwidth especially if you have a 56k modem like me.

It used to work out for me that 1hrs game play would be around 12meg dload and 4meg upload.

I only used SNL during the off-peak hours with my 56k modem only connecting at 38,777kb/s most of the time mind you and i could still manage to dload between 2 and 3 Gig a month easily!

Farls

btw, get rid of Napster...Kazaa is ideally what u need especially in these times if your dloading music/games/patches/programs.

LegacyUser · 22-07-2001 2:49pm

To Farls:
Sorry to stray from topic but... what is Kazaa??- You can e-mail details to me if u like

80project@stauntonline.com

www.80project.com

LegacyUser · 22-07-2001 3:51pm

Originally posted by Gladiator:

o_donnel_abu there is no rational cap,
A cap in any form is totaly unexceptable

I dont' konw about that: If ISPs want to refuse to serve loss-generating customers, then that is their right.

I think it would be a shame if there were to be no Irish ISP offering an unmetered DSL service, but I accept that these are tough times for the Internet industry, and a business model that involves selling services at a loss just doesn't cut it anymore.

I think its pretty healthy to charge people based on usage: I pay my electricity, gas and telephone bills based on how much I use, and I don't see why net access should be any different. I think its irrational to charge on a per minute basis to send or recieve data, as for dialup Internet, but for a persistent connection it makes perfect sense to charge per mb in order to make people use bandwidth responsibly.

Further, I think that competition between DSL ISPs will in time bring the cost and quality of service to somewhere about the same as European levels in general.

That's not to say that I agree with either the prices or the limits bandied about here though.

[This message has been edited by hudson806 (edited 22-07-2001).]

Stephen · 22-07-2001 4:22pm

I think its pretty healthy to charge people based on usage: I pay my electricity, gas and telephone bills based on how much I use, and I don't see why net access should be any different. I think its irrational to charge on a per minute basis to send or recieve data, as for dialup Internet, but for a persistent connection it makes perfect sense to charge per mb in order to make people use bandwidth responsibly.

I'd prefer to think of it like TV - you pay your TV licence every year and get unlimited hours of television for that.

LegacyUser · 22-07-2001 4:40pm

Originally posted by Stephen:
I'd prefer to think of it like TV - you pay your TV licence every year and get unlimited hours of television for that.

But TV is a broadcast medium - there is no additional cost to RTE by you choosing to watch more television.

Internet traffic on the other hand is a narrowcast medium; when you choose to download the latest DiVx or whatever, there is a marginal cost incurred by the ISP. Metered service simply shifts that cost back onto you, to allow you to make the decision about how badly you want that data.

As long as the per mb charge is low enough, you'll instintivly make that decision, just as you don't think about how much the electicity will cost when you watch a DVD, because the cost is so low.

So while it is nice to think of Internet access as being like TV, the fact remains that it is not.

To cut the whole flat-rate vs. metered issue to the chase (based on the assumption that the ISP has to turn a profit to stay in business):

Unmetered broadband either forces you to pay for someone else's downloads (if you're a light user), or someone else to pay for your downloads (if you're a heavy user)

Metered broadband allows you to pay for your own downloads, and hence pay less if you want to.

[This message has been edited by hudson806 (edited 22-07-2001).]

LegacyUser · 22-07-2001 4:52pm

hudson806 i totaly disagree,
Any form of caping is out of order.
You keep on talkign about useing bandwidth responsibly, but that my whole point, i dont want to look at something and thing, hmm a 100mb movie is that really worth 5 pounds or what ever they will charge,
the whole point of broadband, and i think your missing it, is to lebralise the net,

You keep on talking about selling at a lost,
I dont know the set up caost involved with adsl but i do know by using ADSL Eircon will make twice as much for ever 2mbs of bandwidth it supplies,
an unlimited server just means they will have a smaller profit,

"I think its pretty healthy to charge people based on usage"
i disagree, i think it very unhealthy for the growth of the internet and the has wide spread it is, keeping broadband only to those who can afford high bills,

"I pay my electricity, gas and telephone bills based on how much I use"

Electricity and Gas are products, which have to be generated, expence in providing each of them, bandwidth is there to be used or not, think of it as a road, imagine being charge per km travilled,
Your phone is nothing like the other two, and if you believe its resonable to charge per minute for voice you must to for data

LegacyUser · 22-07-2001 5:02pm

Originally posted by hudson806:
that it is not.

Unmetered broadband either forces you to pay for someone else's downloads (if you're a light user), or someone else to pay for your downloads (if you're a heavy user)

Metered broadband allows you to pay for your own downloads, and hence pay less if you want to.

[This message has been edited by hudson806 (edited 22-07-2001).]

im trying not to insult you but this ****ed me off,
unmetered allows you the option to download what you want at a fixed price,
metered allows you to pay a fixed price and the option of paying more for every thing you download afte

Most want Broadband for the peace of mind of not having to worry about the bill, or how long there online or how much they download,
if you cant see this a one of, if not the biggest concernt of most members here then i thing your missing the point of ioffl

PEACE OF MIND ring a bell, electicity is unavoidable and if we spent our time worring avery time we switched on a light we be
freaks,

i find it hard to put in words how much i disagree with you, other telecoms in other countries manage find,

Major point, you keep getting back to coast, as if adsl was a major kick in the head for an isp, well over 56k per minute it is, but they still wake a profit on it,

LegacyUser · 22-07-2001 5:14pm

anyway this is pointless, without more facts,
like the price eircom will charge, and what the limit will be we cant have it out,

We would have to know conenction ratio to work out the profits, and then decide,

Personal its my view that the fee they are asking is more then enough to cover high user,

LegacyUser · 22-07-2001 5:21pm

I'm just wondering why flat-rate broadband is common elsewhere. The reasons, I think, are two-fold.

1. The cost of bandwidth is marginal compared to the initial capital investment, maintenance and rental cost, therefore although light users subsidise heavy users, it is to a minor extent and is outweighed by the overall attractiveness of flat-rate for all users.

2. By giving users a quota of 'free' megabytes, you are encouraging them to use up this amount at the end of the billing period. Thus it is more attractive to ISPs to promise flat-rate and boot off "abusers" of the service while keeping their criteria for booting them off secret.

My own view: 1) provided we can get a number of ISPs involved in selling ADSL and 2) provided the service is provided to them by the encumbant on a fairly flat-rate wholesale basis, I believe that something akin to flat-rate will emerge through competition.

Nevertheless, although wholesale pricing decisions will apply to all ISPs, the decisions will be made for the benefit of the Eircom group as a whole. Therefore special attention needs to be paid to the basis and level of Eircom's wholesale pricing to ISPs.

Can anyone have a bash at my for questions mentioned in my post earlier:

1. Is this what is known as 'bitstream' unbundling?

2. Will Eircom be the sole provider of bandwidth to the exchanges?

3. If 2., will Eircom be free to charge for this bandwidth on whatever basis they choose?

4. On what basis does the DSL provider charge ISPs for bandwidth in other countries?

If the campaign involves talking to insiders, it is vital that we educate ourselves on the way the market works.

LegacyUser · 22-07-2001 5:27pm

id like an answer to those questions but i think for the first few, only eircom or the odtr can answer as we dont have all the facts to how it will be set up

Allso thanks, your first comments sumed up my feeling on charging per mb as its not a perventive measure more a month making one

LegacyUser · 22-07-2001 5:32pm

Originally posted by Gladiator:

the whole point of broadband, and i think your missing it, is to lebralise the net,

Erm, the Internet isn't a social service. Broadband exists because companies have worked out how to make themselves more profitable by providing it. No other reason. Nada. Zip.

You keep on talking about selling at a lost,
I dont know the set up caost involved with adsl but i do know by using ADSL Eircon will make twice as much for ever 2mbs of bandwidth it supplies,
an unlimited server just means they will have a smaller profit

You're failing to draw a distinction between the LEC (Eircom Ireland) and the ISP. Eircom will just sell backhaul to ISPs. Its up to the ISP to cap it. The ISP market will be competitive once a few ISPs get involved, and prices will fall to more accurately reflect the cost of providing the service. I think that ISPs will inevitably provide a flat rate option, in reflection of the huge demand for this service from heavy users.

"I think its pretty healthy to charge people based on usage"
i disagree, i think it very unhealthy for the growth of the internet and the has wide spread it is, keeping broadband only to those who can afford high bills

Actually, I think the opposite is true. As long as people who want to just 'dip their toe' into broadband have to subsidise those who live online, the prices won't fall.

It doesn't always seem too obvious, but a day will very soon some when a majority of households are hooked to the Internet on broadband. Even people who just use the Net to email their son in Australia. If we don't start think about a sensible pricing structure now they will be forced to pay for my downloads. That's not fair. In terms of social inclusion Internet access will remain an IEP50/month service for the wealthy.

Electricity and Gas are products, which have to be generated, expence in providing each of them, bandwidth is there to be used or not, think of it as a road, imagine being charge per km travilled,

So is bandwidth. If an ISP buys 100mb of bandwidth to divvy out amongst their customers, it will cost less than if they buy 200mb. Your statement that it is there 'to be used' is nonsensical.

Your phone is nothing like the other two, and if you believe its resonable to charge per minute for voice you must to for data

Maybe I wasn't too clear about that. WHen you make a voice call, the benefit you get is in terms of time (You have a good idea of what you can say in ten minutes, so its logical to bill on a per-minute basis). When you make a data call the benefit you get is in data, and you should be charged in terms of data. Using the PSTN network for Internet access for so many years has skewed many peoples' perspective on this issue, IMHO.

However, I'm not saying that Flat-rate is necessarily a bad thing. The tiered pricing package idea makes lots of sense to my mind - If I want to make heavy use of the Internet, and I want peace of mind, I'll be put into the same rough usage category as other people who think likewise, and between us we will pay for our service. But we won't be subsidised by the light users.

Is that not only fair?

Of course, if there's an ISP out there (and there seem to be a few elsewhere) that can turn a profit providing an unmetered service, then more power to them - I sure don't want to pay any more than I have to

.

And Skeptic - I fully agree with your reasoning of why an ISP will provide flat rate access. Now lets see if the ISPs look at it that way.

And sorry, I don't have any answers for your questions.

[This message has been edited by hudson806 (edited 22-07-2001).]

bkehoe · 22-07-2001 6:11pm

DSL, etc is designed to be 'flat rate', and to be capped to speeds, and not monthly bandwidth.

Telestra in Australia is the only other company who caps bandwidth usage monthly. When they introduced this, 3GB, which is nothing, a few months ago there was uproar, with many people changing to alernative providers who do the same speeds at the same price but uncapped, thus telestra has lost customers, and probably money too.

Think of this. You want to download, say, the newest Linux distro. Most of em come on 2 or 3 ISO images, so you're talking about 1.8GB in one download. Then you decide to visit windows update, and update your software, and so on.

You quote your usage on 56k. In my opinion, it's irrelevent when it comes to ADSL, as you will use ADSL much more than 56k. First, your games WILL use more bandwidth than they do with 56k, as they will have the capability to do so. You may choose to play a station like 2FM on high quality audio in real player for a few hours. Then when you're surfing, pages will load quicker, so you'll tend to spend more time going to more pages, and without realising download say 2MB of a flash animation just to enter a site. You could end up using 200MB/day without even downloading stuff like warez, divx, e.t.c. Even map pack addons for games can be over 100MB each.

A realistic cap, in my opinion, if absolutely necessary would be 20GB per month at the price they'll probably be charging. Bandwidth is cheap. In the US its around $10 per 5GB. Obviously it will cost more here (well it is Ireland

) but not any more than double.

Brendan

LegacyUser · 22-07-2001 6:12pm

The cost of providing a local call is flat, because every user has his own dedicated "road" to the telephone exchange. Additionally, because a 56k modem provides so little bandwidth, it is illogical to monitor data transferred. As such, the only logical way to bill for analogue Internet access is to have one fixed monthly cost.

For broadband however, because the subscriber can theoretically download many gigabytes of data per day, it may be reasonable for a telecoms company to enable a limit -- 10 GB per month, for example.

You may note that while broadband users in America can download as much as they want, their TOS usually states that "the user is not allowed to run a public web or file server".

LegacyUser · 22-07-2001 6:24pm

My own view is that no company should be forced by regulation to sell at a loss. The result to that is that they will simply cease to operate in the market. However the regulator need to understand the difference between selling at a loss and what Eircom considers cost-effective. When considering the pricing for wholesale ADSL, Eircom will take into account the effect on the Eircom group as a whole. For example, losses made by Eircom.net can be offset by profits on the the fixed-line business to the disadvantage of independant ISPs. In addition to this, Eircom will calculate the losses incurred from ISDN (and possibly 64K leased lines) users switching over to ADSL. They will also want to make a large profit to pay for their large operating costs elswhere in the business. This sort of thinking is natural for any sort of Business.

Should third party operators, however, pick up the bill for Eircoms' continued use of obsolete technology at high prices? Should they pay for the fact that Eircom is a bloated company and needs the money?

I think that these wholesale costs need to be independently assessed by the regulator and the true cost imposed. Otherwise no ISP will be in a position to offer flat-rate even though they might feel such a product would sell very well. This is very similar to the situation with nolimits and per-minute billing.

Personally, I would like to see both pre-paid and flat-rate options available. I am deliberately leaving out retail prices at the moment because I want to see as much competion in the retail market as possible.

[This message has been edited by Skeptic1 (edited 22-07-2001).]

LegacyUser · 22-07-2001 6:24pm

ba i cant argue with you, you make fine points, mine is that, thats the way the internet works.
one users doesnt use all his 50 pounds worth, a light user, this subs a user who use more then his 50 pounds worth,

its the same way with connction ratio,
why isnt there a 1:1 ratio, because theres no need,
one person isnt useing their full 516k so another user can, so everybody get the speed when they need it, this allow isp to have a 50:1 ratio,
its the exact same thing,
if you going to charge each user for what they download then i demand not to share my speed, i demand that if i paying for a download i should get it at the speed i pay for, do you not agree?
you see it works both ways, the only reason it works is because its all subed.

LegacyUser · 22-07-2001 6:37pm

Skeptic1 nailed it on the head,
and hubson, one last things, i hope your wrong about the economical thing as nothing makes eircom more money then 56k internet,

LegacyUser · 22-07-2001 7:06pm

why isnt there a 1:1 ratio, because theres no need

There isn't a 1:1 ratio because it would be absurdly expensive. It was once available in the US via Covad's SDSL service - they would provide a 1:1 backhaul to the ISP, which could then deal with service quality for itself. Of course, when ISPs found themselves having to pay for DSL-3 backhauls for less than 100 customers that changed pretty quickly. And the quality of the service fell as a result.

DSL, etc is designed to be 'flat rate', and to be capped to speeds, and not monthly bandwidth.

DSL is just an edge technology - how it is implemented is entirely up to the provider. It just happens that most ISPs find the most appropriate model to be flat-rate.

Telestra in Australia is the only other company who caps bandwidth usage monthly.

Quite a few smaller ISPs who rent ports from CLECs and ILECs in the US also impose monthly caps - they can't see any economic way to stay in business without them, presumably.

In the US its around $10 per 5GB.

And how many ISPs do you think are going to get rich providing a 20gig/month DSL service for 15 bucks at that price?

Originally posted by Urban Weigl:
The cost of providing a local call is flat, because every user has his own dedicated "road" to the telephone exchange. Additionally, because a 56k modem provides so little bandwidth, it is illogical to monitor data transferred. As such, the only logical way to bill for analogue Internet access is to have one fixed monthly cost.

I'm sorry. I don't think I made myself any clearer in my clarification of this

Allow me to try again:

On the switched PSTN network we are charged by the minute, but an you point out, this is because of the limits of circuit switched networks.

Leaving aside the technology involved for a second, its slightly bizzare to be be charged for data on a per-minute basis - it just seems slightly anachronistic, since you can use either lots of data or very little data when you connect (not so much with 56k, but imagine if you had 512k dialup internet access...

) It would be more logical to bill by data used.

Now DSL comes along and rectifies the per-minute problem with always on connectivity. I would argue that this means that we can now move to the more logical method of billing by data transferred, which always should have been done if PSTN technology hadn't been so limited (There was always a correlation between data transferred and time online on narrowband connections anyway.)

However, some people are now saying 'We've used technology to eliminate the need for the per-minute charges; therefore the service can only be flat-rate." All I'm saying is that that is not necessarily the case, and that usage charges(either per mb (nasty) or tiered pricing(my preference)) might make more sense for everyone.

[This message has been edited by hudson806 (edited 22-07-2001).]

[This message has been edited by hudson806 (edited 22-07-2001).]

LegacyUser · 23-07-2001 11:52am

What's clear is we gotta have always-on, data-based connections. DSL is really the only show in town. Forcing telcos to mess about with voice-network based products when they could be installing DSL is only going to delay progress.

There should be no capping, but different quality flat-rate services. On the cheap ones, it's a free for all and you suffer bandwidth nose-diving at times. Just like with the cheap dial-ups you suffer engaged tones at times, etc.

As previously mentioned, I don't believe the bandwidth is the major cost to the providers anyway and it's shrinking all the time with improved technology. Capping would introduce a nasty norm into the market..

What I really don't want to something like the mobile network where all the operators effectively form a cartel to all offer capped service as standard..

LegacyUser · 23-07-2001 12:37pm

hudson806 i see your point, but look at mine, thats the way it works, you share bandwidth, why no sharing the coast to,

LegacyUser · 23-07-2001 12:44pm

Originally posted by Fergus:

There should be no capping, but different quality flat-rate services. On the cheap ones, it's a free for all and you suffer bandwidth nose-diving at times. Just like with the cheap dial-ups you suffer engaged tones at times, etc.

That would be nice, but the easiest technical way to provide different products is with capping; at low speeds (<1 meg/s)reducing the speed of the service still further doesn't noticably reduce the load on the ISP.

As previously mentioned, I don't believe the bandwidth is the major cost to the providers anyway and it's shrinking all the time with improved technology. Capping would introduce a nasty norm into the market..

Definitely. I would only be in favour of tiered pricing if it accurately reflected the cost of providing the service. eg: 1gig for IEP40, IEP60 for 10gig and so on.

What I really don't want to something like the mobile network where all the operators effectively form a cartel to all offer capped service as standard..

With a bit of luck that won't happen. Part of the reason its so common on mobile networks, is that bandwidth is a finite resource - each base station can only handle a certain amount of data at any time.

LegacyUser · 23-07-2001 12:57pm

hudson806 you cant say what a fair cap is untill you have what the per mb charge is,

LegacyUser · 23-07-2001 1:07pm

Originally posted by Gladiator:
hudson806 you cant say what a fair cap is untill you have what the per mb charge is,

(Rolls eyes skyward). I was giving a vague idea of the levels I'm thinking about, mainly to indicate that I agree that most of the prices being bandied about here are too high. I don't think anyone is mad enough to think that that was supposed to be a comprehensive pricing proposal or something

[This message has been edited by hudson806 (edited 23-07-2001).]

LegacyUser · 23-07-2001 1:18pm

if there goign to charge per mb, then there should be no sub fee, or a tiny one like £10 or a fiver, im deadly serious,

your talking about paying for what you use, then why should you pay more,

i think we will get a situation the same as 56k, set up the exact same way, esat pay a % or every mb downloaded to eircom and so fort,

this is what your sugesting,

Broadband Capping - Why?

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