61–68 of 68 posts
I think this is fair. Bandwidth costs money, usage likely follows a power law distribution, and their fees are reasonable: AT&T: $10/50 GB = 20 cents/GB Amazon S3/EC2: 10 cents/GB It's not like we're being gouged here...
Our family watches a lot of Netflix. My kids will watch several movies or shows throughout the day, my wife watches her shows, and we might throw a movie on in the evening after the kids have gone to bed. If the average size of a 2 hour movie on Netflix is 1.8GB (source: http://blog.streamingmedia.com/the_business_of_online_vi/200... ) and if we watch on average move than 2.7 movies a day, then we will almost definit…
Then I acidentally left the live.twit.tv stream on for about 12 hours. I haven't checked, but I expect to either have to heavily conserve bandwidth until my next bill, or get a friendly letter from my ISP. Offsite backups like carbonite or mozy are totally out of the question obviously. I had planned on downloading MS Server 2011, but I'll have to put that off until the next billing cycle too. I also rent and buy movies and TV shows off of itunes, but I have to balance that and my netflix watching so I don't go over.
Everything I do is 100% legal, yet without vigilance I could easily blow through my cap within two weeks. The phone company offers a slightly higher cap (you can get up to 250GB) but it's much slower. Welcome to life in Canada...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nowadays, a significant portion of those "bandwidth abusers" are people who are just watching movies and TV shows on Netflix. The use of Netflix instant streaming has grown tremendously over the past year, and for many people, it's become the exclusive source for non-live video content.
To bust a 250GB cap with NetFlix, you have to watch 250 hours of exclusively HD content; 8 full hours a day, every day, nonstop.
Why are you defending AT&T for lowering its level of service by an order of magnitude and imposing gigantic overage fees?
I did some quick math. I could go over this cap on my DSL line simply by using my connection at full speed for LESS than a tenth of a month; i.e., less than 2.4 hrs per day. Sorry, that's not acceptable on an "unlimited" link.
I like how they claim that keeping prices the same for less bandwidth is "good for the average consumer".
If the alternative is a rate hike, then it is.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> can you also tell me why the 98% of people who pay for U-Verse should have to pay for that level of service, which they will never come close to using They are now effectively paying the exact same amount for a reduced level of (potential) service. Unless you're willing to speculate that this will eventually lower costs for the 98% (doubt it, are Comcast's users better off?), there is no gain for any end user in th…
In what way is their service reduced? Nobody who isn't torrenting is going to come anywhere close to this cap. It's 250 hours of streaming HD video.
I think this is fair. Bandwidth costs money, usage likely follows a power law distribution, and their fees are reasonable: AT&T: $10/50 GB = 20 cents/GB Amazon S3/EC2: 10 cents/GB It's not like we're being gouged here...
I'd be less ticked off if the rate above cap were more similar to the rate below cap, and if the cap allowed saturating your link more than 9% of the time, which is what this cap does for DSL users with a typical 6.5 Mbps download speed.
To buy a connection that can actually be used 24/7 with the new price structure would cost well over $200/month. That's not cool.
Our family watches a lot of Netflix. My kids will watch several movies or shows throughout the day, my wife watches her shows, and we might throw a movie on in the evening after the kids have gone to bed. If the average size of a 2 hour movie on Netflix is 1.8GB (source: http://blog.streamingmedia.com/the_business_of_online_vi/200... ) and if we watch on average move than 2.7 movies a day, then we will almost definit…
FYI I'm in Canada and use Canadian Netflix. I have a 175GB cap on my cable internet (it's the biggest I could buy). This month I was sitting at about 120GB transfer with average netflix watching (several TV episodes a night and 1-2 movies a week), with about a week left. Then I acidentally left the live.twit.tv stream on for about 12 hours. I haven't checked, but I expect to either have to heavily conserve bandwidth…