Quote:
Originally Posted by Templar
That talk has been going on for years. I think they'd lose money if they did that and they know it, that's why so few of them have pulled the trigger on it. Unless ALL of the ISP's local to you did it, I'm certain most people would just jump ship to whoever didn't cap it, even if they suffered slower speeds. For the average user, a cap at say 50GB isn't a big deal, but I would think that companies like Netflix and Hulu would beg to differ.
Although, HughesNet satellite internet already does it. You're capped at 40GB total with their best plan. You get 20 "anytime bytes" that can be used any time of day. You get an extra 20 "bonus bytes" to use between certain hours (overnight). That's why their plan sucks and no one uses it. It would be a better (faster) option for me where I live, and if it wasn't capped I'd do it. But my usage far exceeds 40GB in a month...
I'm not talking about just surfing the web either hymen. You won't notice a speed difference surfing the web unless you're still on dial-up. If you have multiple people living in your home and you do any sort of internet gaming, streaming, and surfing, then you'll likely need more bandwidth. Especially if you do this at the same time as other people in the house. When I stay with my parents for a week or so, they have a slow, 6 Mbps download DSL connection. When my younger sister is streaming HD movies on Netflix, I might as well forget about trying to play any internet games without lag.
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You might actually be amazed at how many of them actually are rate shaping certain things; P2P, people who are using VPNs (just the traffic over the VPN is rate shaped, but still annoying if you are trying to transfer large files around your company from home), as well as some other ports; you may not see it now, but the ISPs who are my customers have mentioned that they are thinking of expanding it to more ports. It may not be the things that everybody uses, but for those of us who do use those ports/services, there is a difference in speed. That is the first step towards limiting data amounts at XX speed. Also, look how fast all of the cell phone companies jumped on that model, they realized that they can make more money off of the power users (you and I) while keeping the "normal" users happy with slight savings and the ability to have a few more things on their phones for "free" (hotspotting phones is a good example).
Hymen, what Templar is saying is correct; you may not really need the 30Mb pipe into your house, but those of use who do a lot of netflix, large file transfers, torrenting, online gaming and other streaming do need that added speed. I personally have fiber coming into my house through FiOS and have basically every last Mb they can give me given all that I do from my house. Being able to have a full HD video conference like I was at the office has been priceless, I don't have to travel to my other locations nearly as much as I used to and staying home has so many benefits over traveling all the time.