What Are You Doing Right Now
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@travisdh1 said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
The big ISPs are purposely setting caps that prevent people from replacing TV service with cheaper streaming services.
If this were true, then the caps would reflect that. They clearly don't. It takes three Netflix HD streams, 8 hours a day each, every day of the entire month to hit the Comcast cap. It's only kind of an issue in this house because multiple people SLEEP with Netflix running!
They are definitely not capping in such a way as to curtail real world Netflix usage.
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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:
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.
Technology is driving higher usage. i.e. 4K, online gaming, updates to phones, etc.
Sure, but that's different. You still keep getting more for less. That people WANT more doesn't change the fact that they are getting more and paying less (by and large) with all ISPs.
OK I'll again give you that - but it's not keeping pace.
What do you mean? It's two unrelated things. If a company makes their burgers cheaper and cheaper each day, but you keep having kids that want to eat and you have more kids faster than the food gets cheaper yes your cost for dinner will go up but it doesn't change the fact that the food is getting cheaper.
There is nothing in the "desire to consume more" than makes "the thing we want cheaper."
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@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@travisdh1 said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
While true, we're NOT comparing to old dialup here, but what was available a year ago at most.
So a year ago my family could only get 20Mb/s. Now they get 120Mb/s. They were paying like $60/mo. Now they pay like $80/mo with a 1TB cap.
While they COULD pull more than the cap a year ago, they couldn't reasonable use it. Today they get way more potential use, and the ability to pay for it.
While true, why does this entire thing suddenly change when Google Fiber even start building in a new area? Prices suddenly drop and caps disappear.
The 1TB caps are so new I forgot about them. Most caps I'm aware of are still 150GB to 300GB range. How fast would a 20Mb/s connection blow through that 150GB cap? Because that's where most of the country is at currently.
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@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@Dashrender said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
If that household restricted it's data back down to 30 Mbs would they be in a usable state? sure, not as happy as they are today, but usable.
But they would still be getting more for less. Basically you are saying that people are greedy and will blame the ISPs no matter how good of a deal they will get.
Yes, actually - I say this because while I KNOW it's not, it feels like a bait and switch - oh hey customer... here's this free upgrade on throughput, oh but yeah it also comes with caps that we know you'll completely blow out of the water so we'll be able to charge you more.
They used to call it unlimited, now they simply say nothing - so it's not false advertising (well AT&T is) but it's not what I, or more, consider honest either. There was a fundamental change, a customer used to be able to max out his line and never worry, now he has to worry if he even considers that.
Bait and switch - over time. Really if they wanted to change the agreement, they should have left everyone where they were, then called and said.. oh hey, by the way, you can upgrade, but you'll have a cap, afterwhich you have to pay X/YGB, etc. Instead, that just starts showing up on the bill.
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@travisdh1 said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
How fast would a 20Mb/s connection blow through that 150GB cap? Because that's where most of the country is at currently.
I've never seen a place with a cap like that. Where are you seeing that?
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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:
If that household restricted it's data back down to 30 Mbs would they be in a usable state? sure, not as happy as they are today, but usable.
But they would still be getting more for less. Basically you are saying that people are greedy and will blame the ISPs no matter how good of a deal they will get.
Yes, actually - I say this because while I KNOW it's not, it feels like a bait and switch - oh hey customer... here's this free upgrade on throughput, oh but yeah it also comes with caps that we know you'll completely blow out of the water so we'll be able to charge you more.
They used to call it unlimited, now they simply say nothing - so it's not false advertising (well AT&T is) but it's not what I, or more, consider honest either. There was a fundamental change, a customer used to be able to max out his line and never worry, now he has to worry if he even considers that.
Bait and switch - over time. Really if they wanted to change the agreement, they should have left everyone where they were, then called and said.. oh hey, by the way, you can upgrade, but you'll have a cap, afterwhich you have to pay X/YGB, etc. Instead, that just starts showing up on the bill.
IF they call it unlimited, that's just lying. Plain and simple. But if they don't, and Xfinity did not, it's not bait and switch in the least. It's simply better value than before at a better model so that the top users pay more than the more casual users. Making fast internet available to more people than before.
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@Dashrender said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
There was a fundamental change, a customer used to be able to max out his line and never worry, now he has to worry if he even considers that.
You can say that about anything. Oh electric cars are bait and switch because we didn't have to charge the cars before.
What? People need to know what they are buying and pay attention. It's not bait and switch because people are too lazy to look and know what they are agreeing to. Nothing sneaky or false here, just a better model where the big users pay more than the small ones.
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Meanwhile at your ISP...
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@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@travisdh1 said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
How fast would a 20Mb/s connection blow through that 150GB cap? Because that's where most of the country is at currently.
I've never seen a place with a cap like that. Where are you seeing that?
I've seent 250 GB caps, I don't know of any as low as 150 GB.
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@Dashrender said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@travisdh1 said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
How fast would a 20Mb/s connection blow through that 150GB cap? Because that's where most of the country is at currently.
I've never seen a place with a cap like that. Where are you seeing that?
I've seent 250 GB caps, I don't know of any as low as 150 GB.
That's pretty low, still. But it's enough to watch Netflix on HD, 8 hours a day, every single day. It's low, but it isn't "nothing" either.
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@Dashrender said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@travisdh1 said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
How fast would a 20Mb/s connection blow through that 150GB cap? Because that's where most of the country is at currently.
I've never seen a place with a cap like that. Where are you seeing that?
I've seent 250 GB caps, I don't know of any as low as 150 GB.
MEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!! I has 50GB.
Mind you, monopoly and usage requirements have a big effect on my internets -
I don't go much over 25GB per month.
Mind you, we don't stream much (if any) and most of our traffic is You Tube, FB and games -
@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@travisdh1 said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
How fast would a 20Mb/s connection blow through that 150GB cap? Because that's where most of the country is at currently.
I've never seen a place with a cap like that. Where are you seeing that?
www.dslreports.com, read the current stuff. It has improved slightly, but it's a glacial pace.
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The things that really get you are things like video game downloads. They can easily burst insane amounts of download in an hour. Last night, for example, we saw 54GB download in a single hour on Steam.
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@travisdh1 said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@travisdh1 said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
How fast would a 20Mb/s connection blow through that 150GB cap? Because that's where most of the country is at currently.
I've never seen a place with a cap like that. Where are you seeing that?
www.dslreports.com, read the current stuff. It has improved slightly, but it's a glacial pace.
Is that stuff accurate? Using Internet in different parts of the country, I'm never running into that at all. If it was common, you'd think that I'd see it somewhere.
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@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
hour. Last night, for example, we saw 54GB download in a single hour on Steam.
I hear some XBox games can be like that.
Again, caps will kill these types of solutions.
We're back to the semi truck driving data around, as long as we can tolerate the latency, it can be significantly cheaper to do physical media.
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@travisdh1 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.
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.
While true, we're NOT comparing to old dialup here, but what was available a year ago at most.
The big ISPs are purposely setting caps that prevent people from replacing TV service with cheaper streaming services.
So, from a company perspective, they're getting a two-fer. Preventing people from replacing needlessly expensive cable/satellite service with a cheaper alternative, and getting a small percentage of people to pay way more. Makes all sorts of sense from a business perspective.
The more and more I read, the more places I see that say, cord cutting it not about cutting costs, it's about freedom of choice.
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@Dashrender said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
hour. Last night, for example, we saw 54GB download in a single hour on Steam.
I hear some XBox games can be like that.
Again, caps will kill these types of solutions.
We're back to the semi truck driving data around, as long as we can tolerate the latency, it can be significantly cheaper to do physical media.
Halo Master Chief Collection had a 20GB day one patch. Glad I didn't buy that one
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@nadnerB 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:
hour. Last night, for example, we saw 54GB download in a single hour on Steam.
I hear some XBox games can be like that.
Again, caps will kill these types of solutions.
We're back to the semi truck driving data around, as long as we can tolerate the latency, it can be significantly cheaper to do physical media.
Halo Master Chief Collection had a 20GB day one patch. Glad I didn't buy that one
Exactly - we're running into bloat problems again. MS is only now, a year after releasing Windows 10, working on enabling Windows 10 to download only the differences needed for future major upgrades. It's been 3-5 GB each time you need to upgrade.
Many companies stopped worrying about bloated software since large, unlimited or nearly unlimited pipes were available to customers, but now seeing these caps, the potential is huge for people to be paying more for a patch than they did for a game ( as already mentioned by Scott).
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@nadnerB 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:
hour. Last night, for example, we saw 54GB download in a single hour on Steam.
I hear some XBox games can be like that.
Again, caps will kill these types of solutions.
We're back to the semi truck driving data around, as long as we can tolerate the latency, it can be significantly cheaper to do physical media.
Halo Master Chief Collection had a 20GB day one patch. Glad I didn't buy that one
The RetroPie I built my brother for Christmas depressed me. The games they came out with before Highspeed internet was widely adopted were so much more complete. Now, companies will release an unfinished game and then sell the fix for it as DLC and people will buy it. It's sad.
