Comments on: The Web 2.0 Has Toll-Booths: Cox, Comcast, and Some Clarity

By: peskypescado

peskypescado — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 23:06:44 +0000

That is interesting. I have heard that from another Cox customer as well. Perhaps they only selectively enforce their policies. They are sufficiently low that they could choice to cut a lot of people off.

I should say that of all of the ISPs I have dealt with Cox is actually my favorite, and I have tried quite a few (Comcast, Time Warner, PacBell, SBC, AT&T, Covad, Insight, DirecWay, some regional wireless provider, and of course Cox).

By: Ron

Ron — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 19:15:57 +0000

I’m a Cox Preferred customer, and in the past month, I’ve downloaded an order of magnitude more than 40GB.

But it’s all been Usenet, and Cox *does* limit nntp bandwidth to ~220KBps (whereas FTPing a big file runs at 600-750Kbps).

By: Nick Cowie

Nick Cowie — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 08:35:03 +0000

Welcome to the Australian ISP market, except they have to be upfront about the download limits (and starting to add upload limits too now).

Choosing a plan is not just speed, but peak and off peak download limits. Do they have upload limits, is the telephone line rental(usually around $15-$20 a month) bundled etc.

And it is expensive here $70AU = $65US a month for 10Gb (includes both up and down) + 20Gb off peak (2am – noon), 16Mb/1Mb (right distance from exchange), include line rental and VOIP. If I go over my cap, slowed to 128kbs/64kbs for rest of month.

Could of got it cheaper through a less reliable provider, could of been more expensive through others.

By: Uncertain Future For Some ISPs | Mashable! - The Social Networking Blog

Uncertain Future For Some ISPs | Mashable! - The Social Networking Blog — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 21:30:06 +0000

[…] You’ve heard the stories, you’ve read the commentary, you’ve weighed the pros and cons, and most of you have likely fallen on the no-limits side of the divide. For data consumption, that is. If nothing else, it’s really just a whole lot less complicated than what Cox and others are proposing and implementing, which is to tell you the subscriber to eat your heart out, if only to a certain extent. One more person to follow countless others in learning first-hand of a glass ceiling is Paul Ellis of TechConsumer. […]

By: Paul Ellis

Paul Ellis — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 17:38:09 +0000

I’m actually ok with the top plan just having a really really high cap, but not unlimited. Similar to how my night and weekends plan has 5000 minutes which is functionally unlimited for all but people who would abuse the system. I don’t think it is necessary to have a residential Internet package that has an AAU over 50%.

If you can average 50% of your top rated speed 24 hours a day every single day non-stop that seems pretty reasonable to me. Beyond that and you should probably have to step up to a commercial plan.

I still think unmetered off-peak hours would be really good. You should be allowed 1-2 months per year where you exceed your limit too. That would account for the rare occurrences like signing up for a new online backup when you will upload a ton all at once, but from there on out it will just be doing updates.

By: Bob Caswell

Bob Caswell — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 17:27:44 +0000

Well, if those two extremes become the only two options, then I’d side with bandwidth caps. But I think that the current most expensive Comcast plan (for consumers) should have unlimited bandwidth for the price it currently is (i.e., there shouldn’t be price raises all of a sudden).

I’m fine if lower plans are introduced or tweaked with bandwidth caps. But whatever the top package is should remain the same price with no bandwidth caps (this would appease me, at least).

By: Paul Ellis

Paul Ellis — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 17:04:37 +0000

Maybe the highest tier plan should be unlimited, but there is certainly a market need for low bandwidth cheaper plans. You can’t sell $15/month internet plans with unlimited bandwidth with people BitTorrenting their hearts out at a profit.

I don’t think I want it to get as granular as cellphones are (do you want texting? how many messages? how many minutes do you want? data plan? unlimited or limited data plan? 2G or 3G? 1 year or 2 year commitment? etc, etc, etc) but 3-4 plans should be ok. The lowest plan could be for my grandma and the higher tier could be for people like you and me.

The bottom line is this. The main alternative to bandwidth caps that ISPs are going to look at for network load management is going to be prioritized traffic based on the payload, and I’m not comfortable with that. Then you’ll end up with online video/gaming/etc being slow unless you pay for that specific feature (much more complicated like cell phone text messaging, data plans, etc). I’d much rather see an application agnostic approach to network management.

By: Bob Caswell

Bob Caswell — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 16:56:36 +0000

Makes sense. Clearly laid out information is probably the first step, but just like cellphone plans, that shouldn’t mean that there isn’t at least an option for unlimited. And the nights/weekends concept is intriguing, though I still feel the whole thing feels like going backwards to try and go forwards. The bottom line is that I don’t want to deal with caps.

By: Paul Ellis

Paul Ellis — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 16:50:36 +0000

I think it is somewhat irrelevant, or certainly much less significant, as to what I personally think is an acceptable cap. My usage is different than many others. If the information is clearly laid out on the product pages then I can make that decision when I shop around and sign up.

Personally, I am very concerned about my upload cap. The 10GB cap will get blown by with my online backup software. I do use BitTorrent once in a while (usually just for new Linux distros I want to try out) and I do a lot of long-form online video (Xbox Live rentals, Netflix, Hulu, Orb, etc).

What I’d love to see would be some sort of uncapped time of day. Similar to the nights and weekends concept used for cellphones. Why not only meter speeds and data transfers from 6am-midnight? That would allow people to use online backup solutions and P2P during off-peak times without affecting most other users.

By: Bob Caswell

Bob Caswell — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 16:20:38 +0000

So since you’re “not against the idea of consumption caps,” can I push the issue a little further and ask what you think an acceptable cap might be? In asking the question, I guess I’m just pointing out that “acceptable” will mean different things to different people.

I think most everyone (consumers, at least) can agree that the current caps are a bit low. It’s just finding that right level… which I think will be difficult… which is why I don’t think caps are a good idea.

By: Doug aka nullvariable

Doug aka nullvariable — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 15:50:23 +0000

Consumers can’t rail against what they don’t know about! Thanks for putting some real numbers out there. Hopefully one of the big guns will recognize that there are enough savvy customers out there that putting these kinds of numbers out front will boost sales and that they can easily beat the competition’s numbers. Somehow I see this all trending back like the cellphones are doing now with unlimited plans. Oh well. As long as the consumers have a choice things will improve. Take away the choice and things really start to suck.