Printable View
How come many ISPs from developed countries, such as the US and Canada, place monthly caps on the amount of data customers may transfer, while no one from mine, a "developing" one, does it? :unsure:
(One provider, Arnet, once had plans to implement one such limitation, set to 4GB per month. This was received with overwhelming negative feedback and thus not fulfilled, but I guess people from the countries I've mentioned before aren't happy about it, either...)
You got a good point here
If the ISPs your're talking about in the US and Canada are major internet providers, this is a a bit stupid.
When you come to think of it, why would they do such a thing?. I mean we're not in the late 90s or early 20s where you had to wait for the phone to dial to the internet.
Companies are now installing 100mpbs (in the uk by the end of 2010) and others are setting download limits!
In the UK this is not a problem, because when you look at the number of offers and the numbers of companies you'll go crazy.... chose what is suitable for you
maybe this suggest that the US & Canada are not developed yet :wink2:
Well I can tell you in my area, USA IL we have seen periods of time where our download speeds drop to 5Mbps from 12 or 20 or even 32. People abuse the network by downloading 24/7 and on a network such as Comcast, a lot of people downloading 24/7 creates a lot of traffic and causes congestion. At first Comcast would set limitations to customers who were downloading 24/7 (top 1% downloaders of the network). It then began using Sandvine to basically stop torrent seeding. These were during the times when Docsis 1.1 was on the nodes, maybe with the introduction of 2.0. Then people filed complaints against Comcast and the FCC took action against them and forced them to stop using Sandvine, so this caused the immediate issuance of the 250GB limit per month. Other ISPs still use p2p filtering software and Comcast may resume to do so since they won the latest case in the US courts, but now the Comcast nodes are upgraded mostly to Docsis 3.0 so we may not see the p2p filtering.
Short version: The FCC's action against Comcast caused Comcast to stop using Sandvine and caused Comcast to implement a 250GB limit.
I am not really knowledgeable about other ISPs in USA so I can't really explain why they do it. However, I never noticed AT&T implementing any kind of limitation or filters but then again most of the abuse was done on Comcast networks in my area since they had much greater speeds, even now after AT&T implemented fiber optics.
Some UK ISPs also has an "invisible" limit on download also. A popular fiber optic ISP, Virgin, offers a very cheap 50Mbps line but they send out letters and emails telling customers to ease the downloading.
Well, in my contract is said if i have got a transfer of more than about 100 gigs a month, ill be put pack to an 10/1 line until the next month has begon.
I had about 1.500 gigs the last month, and nothing happened. (T-Com)
they send letters for illegal downloads as well a.k.a torrents, I'm not in contract with them but I've heard they only reduce your speed if you upload or download too much.Quote:
Originally Posted by MrCheat
Simple.People there are either afraid to say something about this or are obligated to shut up.But try this in France and i bet there will be a rebelion in at least 1-2 days.Quote:
How come many ISPs from developed countries, such as the US and Canada, place monthly caps on the amount of data customers may transfer, while no one from mine, a "developing" one, does it?
i think my 'developing' country is an exception to this? :biggrin:
well anyway lets start:
i think because the speeds in the US and canada are very fast compared to the speeds in developing countries,
i'll speak only of US, i don't have enough info on Canada.
Verizon US has 50Mbps and 25Mbps , i think Comcast also has 25Mbps plan too(can't check the plans on the website its asking for a us street),
but in here in my country(and i guesss yours) we dream about it.
also the education there (US and Canada) is strong(isn't it?) so a 4 years old kid will watch Barney in HD on youtube!, then this 4 years old kid will grow up and will hear about bittorrent from school, and here it begins, 25Mbps+25Mbps+50Mbps+25Mbps+25Mbps+50Mbps+25Mbps+2 5Mbps+25Mbps+50Mbps+25Mbps+25Mbps+50Mbps are downloading 24/7 non stop :biggrin:
ah not to forget Americans love TV so they will watch their series on the internet...in HD :biggrin:
so thats my explanation :top:
EDIT: Japan and Sweden are an exception to this too , 100Mbps/1Gbps lol
Bandwidth is expensive ... capping their customers traffic and giving them the abilities to buy extra volume generates more income than uncapping their volumes. The main goal is to make profit, so it isn't a surprise when in the land of milk and honey companies might be more focussed on making profit than companies operating in 'countries in development'.
Hehe Comcast has speeds up to 150Mbps per modem, I wonder why we don't meet many Japanese people in our regular forums we visit.Quote:
Originally Posted by cheatos
http://www.speedtest.net/result/501899455.png
it's simple.. it's all about the money.
they found out they can limit your transfer and that in your deal with them it says "UP TO xx Mbit/sec" then they can shape it without breaking the deal.
want the best unlimited internet? pay biatch!
there plans to cap the GBs limit here too but it remained only a "plan" (also due to high negative feedback)
@Anon: Arnet was not the only one. And do you remeber those pay per excess minute plans?
Caps were a marketing failure, and here is why:
-We do not like to be given limits or restricions , you know how we are around here :biggrin:
-Also, back then, we were still switching from dial up, so it was all about having the opportunity to mass download whatever we could.
-The caps were ridiculous, most people that had ADSL/Cable were already downloading the cap maximum per day
-Keep in mind that after the caps were removed, most companies started selling lines faster than what they do today (5/10mb back then, 3/5 today). Because people wanted to mass download, and a lot.
-All that said, there is ONE important reason behind all of this: we do not buy original movies, cds, mp3 or whatever we can download. There is a guy selling pirated movies in each corner, people selling cds in the bus, the trains and the subway, and we all have an mp3/4 player. What we do not buy at a store, we get from the internet, therefore we demand the ability to download a lot of data.
So, I think that in most cases, that is the reason. The US and other "1st world" countries have faster lines, download less P2P and have much much higher caps, besides having a way bigger amount of subscribers, making P2P a bigger problem.
Also, remember that internet's big enemy is not P2P, but streaming, because it gives companies a profit, and P2P does not, so why would they invest in better equipment to provide you with the opportunity to "steal" what they coudl sell you over a streaming service? Think about Netflix, just to name a company. And who would purchase on online movie in here?
I do not think that is true. I am not afraid to call my ISP and tell them I can not download. In fact, most ISPs were capping P2P and they REMOVED it because people simply changed their suscription to a company that did not.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mihai
Most developing countries can not keep up with crime, their judicial systems are usually collapsed, just like their police, so in most cases you can get away with almost everything. I even remember this guy that had a problem with his ADSL connection, he got tired of calling the ISP and getting nowhere for a month, so he simply hacked the ISPs home page :biggrin:
no simple answer here, just possibilities:Quote:
Originally Posted by anon
it may be that such 'developing' isp's were simply able to cover their costs without the need to set up cap limitations, they could have access to cheap bandwidth (through internal/hidden deals or from bigger providers like tier 1's or with local political connections) or offer lower speeds (compared to the 'developed' ones) in the first place, or simply haven't came up to the point of bandwidth saturation or are using some kind of dumping policy (having other profits that cover for these losses)
capping is done because of technical problems as some isp's don't have sufficient bandwidth to handle the load, or they don't want to pay more to their bandwidth providers or want to lure/force users to get a more expensive offer/package
in more capitalist oriented or versed countries companies will probably try to squeeze every cent they can from the end user with slow incremental improvements, this may be the reason why usa is lagging behind in terms of average speeds, bandwidth and broadband penetration (they do offer better ones, but only to certain areas or customers)
asian countries with very high speeds are most likely more aligned with their technological advancements, more willing to offer it to their citizens (rural areas may be an exception), but afaik the benefits are visible only concerning internal traffic (within the fast loops or areas) and not when it comes to connecting to the rest of the world via intercontinental backbones which are either the bottlenecks or intentionally regulated/limited
as for other (european) countries with good infrastructure and high speeds like sweden, imo apart from the willingness to invest and offer better speeds, a significant beneficial factor may be the swedish-finnish based tier 1 provider teliasonera
To be honest, originally my intention wasn't discussing anything here - I only had a question floating in my head with no concrete answer, and wanted to see the different points of view all of you had :happy:
Thanks for all the replies so far, appreciated.
Look at the kind of friends you have :eek:Quote:
Originally Posted by desodorante
The lower speeds thing indeed applies. As far as I know, the maximum available in my country is 6Mbit for home users, and up to 10Mbit for companies. It doesn't compare with the dozens of megabits per second offered in the aforementioned countries. Some providers engage in P2P shaping for specific customers and/or IP ranges (mine's one :dry:) though, meaning their bandwidth supply is far from infinite (just an expression, as technically no provider has an endless amount).Quote:
Originally Posted by slikrapid
For anyone who says in effect "its a money grab" I also agree with you.
Tier1 ISPs arnt really interested in selling to the consumer they are primarily interested in selling to Tier2 and when they do sell to the retail market they will always do at a premium otherwise they would be competing against themselves.
In these situations when their is a monopoly where one company owns the backbone Government should encourge more competition to lower prices and create more innovation.
If you as a conusmer dont shop around and dont deman unlimited ISP will always milk you dry because they can you allow them.
Take a look at car manufacturers ie GM Holden they were unwilling to give good miliage on their cars and instead focused on giving people feel-good and look-good (maybe) cars. When the shit hit the fan when the oil prices went up and no one bought their cars and went bankrupt, they suddenly were able to design very fuel efficient cars in a year. BS they had the ability before but were just riding the easy money.
F1 puts massive money into making faster and more powerful racers, if only car manufacturers did that in the past for fuel efficient cars. Im sure if people always chose the most fuel efficient cars when buying a new one all car manufactuering companies would focus on that instead of simply looks.
Consumers can force big companies to change when done on large scale.
Seven years later...Quote:
Originally Posted by anon
http://www.sb-innovation.de/attachme...chmentid=18400
I'm happy with the 10 Mbps I steal from my neighbor, though :smilie4: