What Are You Doing Right Now
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@Dashrender said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@Dashrender said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
My question is though - WHY the need for the caps? other than to squeeze people for money money?
This seems a really silly question. Why charge people for Internet in the first place, other than to make money? Why be in business at all?
LOL - of course, but we've seen a huge shift in the charge structure recently (the past few years).
Because the speeds have increased so how people use the Internet connections have changed. I hate caps, but they are incredibly obvious to use. Two people with 1Gb/s connections, one will use the same data that they did on 20Mb/s, one will use 50x that. Do you charge them the same when they cost the ISP totally different amounts of money?
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@Dashrender said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
Making the internet more expensive will do little more than kill online services.
At this rate Netflix will only be for the wealthy, etc.
Opposite, actually. That's where you are getting confused. Caps help the smaller users. They are to protect the poor from having to subsidize the rich.
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@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@Dashrender said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
I'm guessing that your family's connection is no longer listed as unlimited, it's now listed as 250 GB/month for X, and $10/50 GB above that... and while that sucks.. that's definitely fine for them to do... because it's not unlimited, and it's spelled out.
It's not listed that way, but a lot of things are. Any kind of cap means that something is not unlimited. Whether it requires extra money, gets slower, etc. that means unlimited is wrong.
I completely agree - and until a few years ago, most directly connection ISPs has no limits/caps on internet usage. But, now with the advent of things like streaming media, now we see companies putting caps in place.
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Story Time:
This Christmas my mother-in-law (more or less) asked if I could look at her computer since we were coming over anyway. She hasn't had internet for 2 1/2 weeks. Her neighbors internet has also been out for the same amount of time. She told me she's had 3 Comcast techs come out and a supervisor. No one could get her internet up and running. They told her that it was her modem so she bought a new modem, which I'm sure costed her a good amount of money but I don't know the specific figure. Then they still couldn't get her internet working. They went through her crawlspaces, replaced cabling, etc. Nothing worked. then they told her its her PC and that she needs to call Dell. Dell said sure we can help you but it's over $200 a year to get service and if you want a single instance of service it's $120. I say sure, I'll take a look at it.
CMD
ipconfig /allOh, she has a 169 IP address. Oh, Comcast DNS must be broken. I change her DNS settings to 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4.
It took 60 seconds to fix a problem that had taken her WEEKS to try to get fixed. Hours on the phone with Comast. 4 different appointments to try to get this fixed and no one could do it. Needless to say she now thinks I'm some kind of super genius and I have brownie points until the end of eternity.
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@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@Dashrender said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
Making the internet more expensive will do little more than kill online services.
At this rate Netflix will only be for the wealthy, etc.
Opposite, actually. That's where you are getting confused. Caps help the smaller users. They are to protect the poor from having to subsidize the rich.
OK Scott. The poor today who has a baseline cable modem in Omaha pays $40/month and only has Netflix, for which they pay $10/month, so their fee is $50/month. Now with these new caps, they could easily see that bill being 5X that if they stream at the max possible of the $40 ISP rate - which they probably would, because they used Netflix and Youtube as their primary sources of entertainment.
Now the rich can afford this, but the poor can't, so now the poor simply go without. How does this help the poor?
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@wirestyle22 said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
Story Time:
This Christmas my mother-in-law (more or less) asked if I could look at her computer since we were coming over anyway. She hasn't had internet for 2 1/2 weeks. Her neighbors internet has also been out for the same amount of time. She told me she's had 3 Comcast techs come out and a supervisor. No one could get her internet up and running. They told her that it was her modem so she bought a new modem, which I'm sure costed her a good amount of money but I don't know the specific figure. Then they still couldn't get her internet working. They went through her crawlspaces, replaced cabling, etc. Nothing worked. I say sure, I'll take a look at it.
CMD
ipconfig /allOh, she has a 169 IP address. Oh, Comcast DNS must be broken. I change her DNS settings to 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4.
It took 60 seconds to fix a problem that had taken her WEEKS to try to get fixed. Hours on the phone with Comast. 4 different appointments to try to get this fixed and no one could do it. Needless to say she now thinks I'm some kind of super genius and I have brownie points until the end of eternity.
I guess that's a decent stance to be held in with a Mother-In-Law. lol
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@FiyaFly said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@wirestyle22 said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
Story Time:
This Christmas my mother-in-law (more or less) asked if I could look at her computer since we were coming over anyway. She hasn't had internet for 2 1/2 weeks. Her neighbors internet has also been out for the same amount of time. She told me she's had 3 Comcast techs come out and a supervisor. No one could get her internet up and running. They told her that it was her modem so she bought a new modem, which I'm sure costed her a good amount of money but I don't know the specific figure. Then they still couldn't get her internet working. They went through her crawlspaces, replaced cabling, etc. Nothing worked. I say sure, I'll take a look at it.
CMD
ipconfig /allOh, she has a 169 IP address. Oh, Comcast DNS must be broken. I change her DNS settings to 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4.
It took 60 seconds to fix a problem that had taken her WEEKS to try to get fixed. Hours on the phone with Comast. 4 different appointments to try to get this fixed and no one could do it. Needless to say she now thinks I'm some kind of super genius and I have brownie points until the end of eternity.
I guess that's a decent stance to be held in with a Mother-In-Law. lol
Well, she listens to every word I say now. So that's good.
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@Dashrender said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
Making the internet more expensive will do little more than kill online services.
At this rate Netflix will only be for the wealthy, etc.
You say making it more expensive, but it's getting cheaper. Where do you see it costing more?
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@wirestyle22 said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
Oh, she has a 169 IP address. Oh, Comcast DNS must be broken. I change her DNS settings to 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4.
eh? what? DNS? because you say 169 IP? lol
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@Dashrender said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@Dashrender said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
Making the internet more expensive will do little more than kill online services.
At this rate Netflix will only be for the wealthy, etc.
Opposite, actually. That's where you are getting confused. Caps help the smaller users. They are to protect the poor from having to subsidize the rich.
OK Scott. The poor today who has a baseline cable modem in Omaha pays $40/month and only has Netflix, for which they pay $10/month, so their fee is $50/month. Now with these new caps, they could easily see that bill being 5X that if they stream at the max possible of the $40 ISP rate - which they probably would, because they used Netflix and Youtube as their primary sources of entertainment.
Now the rich can afford this, but the poor can't, so now the poor simply go without. How does this help the poor?
You are cherry picking. You can watch unlimited Netflix with the baseline Internet with any market of which I know.
It helps the poor by keeping the price down to $40 instead of making them pay the $300 that they are looking at here. Saving the poor $260 seems like helping them a lot.
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@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@Dashrender said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
Making the internet more expensive will do little more than kill online services.
At this rate Netflix will only be for the wealthy, etc.
You say making it more expensive, but it's getting cheaper. Where do you see it costing more?
where is it getting less expensive?
Today I pay $80/month and I utilize 200 GB of throughput. If they cap me at 100 GB for my $80/month, now I'm suddenly paying more...
I know of almost no one who will pay less with caps in place.
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@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@Dashrender said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@Dashrender said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
Making the internet more expensive will do little more than kill online services.
At this rate Netflix will only be for the wealthy, etc.
Opposite, actually. That's where you are getting confused. Caps help the smaller users. They are to protect the poor from having to subsidize the rich.
OK Scott. The poor today who has a baseline cable modem in Omaha pays $40/month and only has Netflix, for which they pay $10/month, so their fee is $50/month. Now with these new caps, they could easily see that bill being 5X that if they stream at the max possible of the $40 ISP rate - which they probably would, because they used Netflix and Youtube as their primary sources of entertainment.
Now the rich can afford this, but the poor can't, so now the poor simply go without. How does this help the poor?
You are cherry picking. You can watch unlimited Netflix with the baseline Internet with any market of which I know.
It helps the poor by keeping the price down to $40 instead of making them pay the $300 that they are looking at here. Saving the poor $260 seems like helping them a lot.
How are they able to watch unlimited Netflix for $40 and you can't?
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@Dashrender said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@Dashrender said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
I'm guessing that your family's connection is no longer listed as unlimited, it's now listed as 250 GB/month for X, and $10/50 GB above that... and while that sucks.. that's definitely fine for them to do... because it's not unlimited, and it's spelled out.
It's not listed that way, but a lot of things are. Any kind of cap means that something is not unlimited. Whether it requires extra money, gets slower, etc. that means unlimited is wrong.
I completely agree - and until a few years ago, most directly connection ISPs has no limits/caps on internet usage. But, now with the advent of things like streaming media, now we see companies putting caps in place.
I think you are making unrelated connections. We've had streaming services for forever and there weren't caps. It's very clearly the larger bandwidths that are bringing caps with them. And it's the one thing that is so obviously the cause of it that I don't see why we are discussing it. I'm unsure where the confusion is coming from.
With huge bandwidths comes the ability to consume insane amounts of it, and therefore a need for caps to make big bandwidth affordable.
In reality, we should change a base rate for the lines and charge per GB to be totally fair. Anything else is skewing to the rich.
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@Dashrender said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@Dashrender said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@Dashrender said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
Making the internet more expensive will do little more than kill online services.
At this rate Netflix will only be for the wealthy, etc.
Opposite, actually. That's where you are getting confused. Caps help the smaller users. They are to protect the poor from having to subsidize the rich.
OK Scott. The poor today who has a baseline cable modem in Omaha pays $40/month and only has Netflix, for which they pay $10/month, so their fee is $50/month. Now with these new caps, they could easily see that bill being 5X that if they stream at the max possible of the $40 ISP rate - which they probably would, because they used Netflix and Youtube as their primary sources of entertainment.
Now the rich can afford this, but the poor can't, so now the poor simply go without. How does this help the poor?
You are cherry picking. You can watch unlimited Netflix with the baseline Internet with any market of which I know.
It helps the poor by keeping the price down to $40 instead of making them pay the $300 that they are looking at here. Saving the poor $260 seems like helping them a lot.
How are they able to watch unlimited Netflix for $40 and you can't?
Of course we can. We aren't just watching Netflix, like I pointed out in my example.
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@Dashrender said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@Dashrender said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
Making the internet more expensive will do little more than kill online services.
At this rate Netflix will only be for the wealthy, etc.
You say making it more expensive, but it's getting cheaper. Where do you see it costing more?
where is it getting less expensive?
Everywhere that I know of. You pay the same for 100Mb/s today that we used to pay for dialup.
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@Dashrender said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
Today I pay $80/month and I utilize 200 GB of throughput. If they cap me at 100 GB for my $80/month, now I'm suddenly paying more...
But they aren't capping you there, are they? So you are NOT paying more. You are making up false scenarios that don't exist.
Basically this is the discussion:
It used to cost X for Internet, now it costs less.
You say "Yeah, but what IF they charged more, it would cost more!"
Okay, but they don't, that's the point.
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@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
In reality, we should change a base rate for the lines and charge per GB to be totally fair. Anything else is skewing to the rich.
OK that would be fine. It's more or less how the cell companies have been doing it forever, except that their base plan is so much higher than what most people need/use, they are taking from the poor if you will, heck, taking from anyone who doesn't use that amount of data.
Google Fi is awesome, $20/m line charge unlimited SMS/MMS/voice, and $10/GB (and it's prorated, not flat).
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@Dashrender said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
I know of almost no one who will pay less with caps in place.
Less than before? How is that possible since before they had no way to use as much Internet. What you are stating is impossible from simple physics.
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@Dashrender said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
In reality, we should change a base rate for the lines and charge per GB to be totally fair. Anything else is skewing to the rich.
OK that would be fine. It's more or less how the cell companies have been doing it forever, except that their base plan is so much higher than what most people need/use, they are taking from the poor if you will, heck, taking from anyone who doesn't use that amount of data.
Google Fi is awesome, $20/m line charge unlimited SMS/MMS/voice, and $10/GB (and it's prorated, not flat).
Yes, base plan being anything more than zero is not the same.
There are two costs to the ISP... one to maintain the connection. One to provide transfer. Charge for each separately to charge for usage. Anything else is the opposite of that.
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@Dashrender said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@wirestyle22 said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
Oh, she has a 169 IP address. Oh, Comcast DNS must be broken. I change her DNS settings to 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4.
eh? what? DNS? because you say 169 IP? lol
She has a modem not a router
