[TriLUG] OT - TWC bandwidth caps on the way?

[Jeremy Portzer]

Warren Myers wrote:
> There already is a usage cap: it's the max (theoretical) rate times seconds
> per month. It's pretty simple. Usage caps like TWC is discussing are far
> more easily (and cheaply) implementable by merely throttling the connection
> speed.
> 

But that's not what your mother and Joe User wants.  Joe User wants to 
download their YouTube videos and emails with large photos attached 
quickly, so a high data rate is useful.    But he isn't doing this all 
day long.  Joe User isn't really (not yet at least) using torrents to 
download hundreds gigabytes of data per month.

As the original post commented - the theoretical data rate is nowhere 
near the actual upstream capacity of the provider.  This is not a 
secret; there is no way such low prices ($45-60) would be available to 
you if it were not.  I don't know why people seem to think this 
"oversubscription" is an "outrage" - it's not, it's a commercial 
reality, and this is how consumer ISPs have always operated, right back 
to the BBS days.

If you want a line where you have the theoretical data capacity 
available to you 100% of time, you need a provisioned circuit like a T1 
line.  There is a reason that T1 lines still cost several hundred 
dollars per month, even though they "only" provide 1.544 Mbit/sec data 
rate.  But they provide that 1.544 Mbit every second of the day, all 
month long.  For 31 days that is about 111 GB if I calculated correctly 
- many of you do more than this on your cable modem but pay MUCH less 
than a T1.

If you truly expect your cable company to provide you the full bitrate 
for every second of the month, then you should be prepared to pay 
T1-like charges for it, right?

I also don't know why you think throttling the connection speed is more 
expensive to implement than the usage caps.  Basic evidence seems to 
indicate otherwise.  The connection speed is already throttled in the 
cable modem's configuration - remember, it just went up from 6000 to 
8000 kbit/sec, as discussed here a few days ago.  This is a basic 
feature of the DOCSIS cable modem protocol.   The upstream is obviously 
throttled too.  TWC already has the infrastructure in place for this and 
uses it!  So what exactly would these high costs be to implement this?

But adding usage caps would require a whole separate web site for people 
to monitor their usage - which adds extra load on customer service too 
when people need to be shown how this site works.  But overall though 
these costs are not high either way, don't get distracted by that.

I really am not a TWC apologist.  I know they do a lot of stupid things 
and are a huge company with a lot of power in the market.  But I do 
think people need to realize that TWC's idea is NOT unreasonable - now 
we'll see if they manage to implement it in a rational manner.

--Jeremy