Customers comment on Broadband caps and metering

Dualsub2006 expressed a concern about usage caps:

Any thoughts of a 40GB cap in Insight land will NOT go over very well.

I hear you and as I have previously mentioned, we currently are not planning any changes in the way we charge customers for their Internet usage. Did I leave the door open to changing that in the future?  Yes I did.  We are keeping a watchful eye on increasing usage patterns and regulatory, legislative and business movements affecting these issues. 

Indeed, Time Warner Cable is testing usage caps in Beaumont, Texas, Comcast is rumored to be considering caps, and the independent operator, BendBroadband in central Oregon implemented caps a while ago.

Then, on the same subject, Michael asked

I'm struck by dualsub2006's comment about a 40GB cap not going over well. Does your company have any statistics on how many Internet customers actually go over 40GB of bandwidth in a given month?"

I actually do know the answer to your question, Michael.  I checked and found that in the past month, 2.1% of our Broadband customers consumed more than 40GB. 

It would be helpful to understand just how much material 40GB of stuff really is:

• 5,700 songs, or
  
• 153 1/2 hour TV shows, or
  
• 80 1 hour TV shows, or
  
• 50 2 Hour Movies

That's a lot of stuff to download in a month.  However, there still is an understandable concern about any plans we might have on metered service. 

For instance, high definition video will require much more bandwidth than today's standard definition products.  And it's great that Sony announced that they will bring You Tube directly to their Bravia HD televisions.  These types of services will put enormous pressure on ISP's to consider how they will fund the investments needed to keep up with dramatic increases in usage-per-customer.  We are keeping a watchful eye on usage patterns but we're not rushing into any quick decisions.

If you missed my previous post about one way to reduce the pressure on ISP's to begin metering, check it out.  At this point, all ISP's are leaving the door open for future reconsideration on metered billing, at least if they're being honest with their customers.

Comments

[Anonymous]

How would things like other computers scanning your computer be handled?

By having a 40 gig cap you essentially make it very easy for some one to either perform a denial of service attack if you cut people off after the cap or of very easily running up the bill. This would be a whole new tool in the arsenal of malicious activities online. At least with my cell phone if I don't pick up the minutes aren't used and I can always hang up on the person.

[Dave II]

40GB is not that much. Since the 10 Mbps service can deliver a maximum of 3,200 GB in one month.

That is less then 2%!!!!

Caps are coming!!!!

Caps Kill cables worst fears IPTV!!!

For example, sky angel IPTV service uses around 1.5 Mbps which if left on 24/7 would use about 480GB per month.

A 40GB cap would only let you watch tv for lest then 25 hours per month.

[ARGO]

Don't forget DOCSIS 3.0 is coming with faster speeds. So, if your buying DVDs online and downloading them from places like Netflix at 4+GB per download a 40Gig limit would be hit quickly.

Any special deals 5DVDs for $20 from those places would guarantee overages.

[Dean McKay]

I see today that Comcast has pledged to offer 100 Mbps service in many markets by 2010... what is the outlook at Insight? Will the only markets that see this ramp up be to protect against FIOS?

Dean, Louisville KY

[dualsub2006]

I agree that 40GB is a LOT of bandwidth to use (not saying you should start charging extra at 40GB, just sayin) but I could hit it easily.

In a 2 day stretch I downloaded the Office 2007 and 2008 trial from Microsoft. About 800MB total. Then the 8.04 release of both desktop and server Ubuntu. Another gig give or take. 8 SD TV shows from iTunes. 3+GB. Total? Around 5GB. Throw in my son's Xbox online gaming and it adds up.

Is that unusual usage for me? Yeah, it is. But I would like to know that if I want to start buying HD content from iTunes that I won't get ripped on my Insight bill.

[Terry]

I would like to know how people are going to be notified if they are close to their cap? It would be nice if I received an email saying I was close and needed to stop dlin for a while, rather than getting a large extra charge on my bill.

I download a fair amount of games and such from Steam and other Direct download site and it would suck that I get charged extra from my ISP because I want to do that.

[Josh Bozeman]

This sounds like a bad idea in general.

You tell technology companies that you're putting a cap on users' bandwidth, you're basically telling them to forget working on better quality products (that will end up taking up more bandwidth), because no one will be able to take advantage of them. Unless wages somehow skyrocket in this country (to match the prices we're paying on a lot of basic stuff), only a few among us will be able to justify the costs of higher bandwidth, paying per GB extra we use, etc. So, we'll have to toss out the new tech that requires more bandwidth (and more money).

HD video would blow through 40GB in NO time flat. So, why would anyone bother with even trying to introduce HD content?

Netflix watch it now requires a minimum of 1Mbps stream. So, I'd assume the stream runs close to 1Mbps, yes? That's 7200Mb (somewhere close to 7GB) per each 2 hour movie right? Wouldn't that limit you to under 6 movies per month? Not the 50 two hour movies listed in the post.

That's not counting your regular downloading of programs, streaming music like Rhapsody, EMail, chatting, streaming podcasts, etc. So basically we're talking about maybe 3 movies a month? I usually watch 1 movie a day on netflix watch it now, on the weeknds I sometimes watch up to 4. That'd put me over 200GB per month (calculating 1 movie per day at 2 hours per movie and 7GB per 2 hours). That's NOT counting bandwidth for all other activities.

Maybe my math is wrong somewhere, but 40GB seems like a tiny amount.

And here's the big question- why everytime I call Insight for anything and everything do they bug me about trying their new 20MBps broadband they're testing? Isn't that around 1.2GB per min? Let's PRETEND any service online even got remotely close to 20GBps (I don't know of any service that feeds that much bandwidth, even if you're sharing on a LAN), and let's pretend it was a constant 20MBps, wouldn't I be maxed out in 40 mins?