More rumours on ISPs download caps...

[Julio Franco]

High-speed Internet service providers are considering adopting new pricing plans that if widely adopted could take a bite out of file swapping.

Now many of the biggest high-speed ISPs are considering capping the amount of bandwidth that their subscribers can use per month, a move that could undermine subscribers' free swapping ways--something that many lawsuits have not yet been able to achieve. If people know they have a limited amount of bandwidth available, the thinking goes, they'll be less likely to download voraciously or allow people to upload songs and music from their computers.

According to Michael Harris, president of Kinetic Strategies, a research company that follows the broadband marketplace closely, the ISPs can't help themselves. "Every major broadband provider is seriously weighing pros and cons of bandwidth consumption caps," he said.

Read more: CNet News.

 

[Enygma]

My DSL provider recently cut their customers speeds in half without telling anyone, and without dropping prices. So I cancelled my account and went with their competitor who hopefully won't do the same.

I can see the RIAA and MPAA(?) putting pressure on ISPs as a lot of bandwidth is used to transfer MP3s and movies.

I don't think it's right for an ISP to to give a certain level of service and then one day decide to give you less for the same money.

 

[Ando]

Quite right to cancel your account. If I had a bandwidth cap put on my broadband I'd cancel, in fact I'd rather go back to unlimited Dialup rather than capped broadband.

 

[Phantasm66]

People should boycott service providers that introduce caps.

 

[Unregistered]

I shiver when I think of caps. Out of boredom I calculated that I probably use around 3 gig a month of bandwith just playing counterstrike. That does not include demo and skill movie downloads. This also does not factor in normal web browsing. I personally do not download movies or music.

 

[Phantasm66]

I download about 15 movies per week. I don't burn all of them to CD, but I do most of them.

I don't play internet games as often as I used to.

 

[Brk]

I've been getting hooked on and playing Warcraft III quite often now on Battle.net, and the introduction of a cap would just be stupid. It would mean less time playing online.

What about those MP3 sites where you pay to download from ligitimately? What about those sites you visit where you download wallpapers that are graphically intense and uncompressed? What about streaming audio (radio) and video from places like the RealNetwork? What about downloding patches that are fairly large in size, like Service Pack 1 for Windows XP? How about if you have another computer in the house that runs Windows 2000/98, etc? Huh? Service Pack 3 when it becomes available. What about updates for games? How about those demos you can download to try out that new game you might want? Those things pack around 100MB or more. What about downloading the latest free Linux distribution from Redhat or SuSE, weighing in at around 1GB or more? How about those movie trailers from apple.com/quicktime? I think you get my point.

 

[Vehementi]

Indeed Brk. The list goes on. This is a pretty indirect way of dealing with stuff like this. It's like not allowing through every 10th person at the Mexican border to cut down on terrorists...about as ridiculous too.

The uncapped broadband provider is going to have alot of business and success in this day & age.

 

[agissi]

Ya, caps would suck BiG time. Im with Phantasm66 - Boycott.

 

[PHATMAN5050]

I dunno if you are all aware of this, but almost every ISP company in the United States already has a cap. I know this from first hand experience... I used to run a Hotline Server and I had it up almost constantly for a month, and then one day my dad received an email from our isp (Cox High Speed Internet, which was @Home just a little while ago) saying that we exceeded the 10gig max and that we need to not exceed that and that it was covered in the TOS.