Its basically meant to describe someone who is using more internet data bandwidth than the majority of other users of their service. And its a load of bull.
How am I a 'hog' if I used their service as they adverstise it? They are selling a flat rate service at a specific speed (or more agravating 'up to' a certain speed, more on that later). This means that if I want to I should be able to max out that connection for 24 hours a day.. thats what I am paying for? Then they point out the small print that its not 'unlimited' and that they have the right to limit heavy users at their descretion. This is all bait and switch tactics to me, I'm no lawyer but I think thats illegal.
I totally understand that they need to manage their networks, I also understand that they need to make a profit for their shareholders, but I don't understand how they can continue to get away with promising a service that no business in their right might would offer.. if you can support every user on your system at the full speed of their connection all of the time, then you have no business offering that as a service. It would be the same as the public water utility offering a flat rate on water service to your house. Most people would use exactly how much they use now on a metered service, but obviously some people would take advantage and water their who neighbourhoods lawns and start running a car wash out of their back yards. That why they charge you per your usage, charging a flat rate on that kind of 'unlimited' service would be very stupid. What they don't do is offer 'unlimited' service for a flat rate, and then cut you off after you supposedly abuse the service you paid for and then point to the small print in your utilitly contract... we wouldn't let other companies get away with this, why do we let the ISPs?
So yea, I'm a hog, but only because you sold your service as 'hey, get our internet service and be a big data hog!'. Hell their TV ad's even say 'download movies and music at lightning fast speeds!'. Then when you use it for just that.. suddenly now your not using it the right way. Smarten up ISPs, start charging for metered bandwidth or shut the fuck up.. I'm tired of listening to you whine when people use your service in exaclty the way that you have taught us to..
Oh and the 'up to' speed thing is fucking stupid. You can't promise any level of speed, due to the nature of the internet. Unless you are downloading web pages from your ISP's local web server, theres going to be an unknown level of both latency and network bottlenecks. You're never going to get the advertised speed 100% of the time, its impossible to be able to provide that unless you can control data on the entire internet. Users need to be responsible for their usage, simple as that. Metered bandwidth is the only smart way to go.. if you network supports 20 mb/s, provide that to everyone. The electric utility doesn't offer me different voltages of service at different prices.. they give you service at whatever the network can handle and then charge you for usage.. its the only fair way to go. Expecting the vast majority of your users to only use a fraction of their bandwidth is only going to work for so long. The problem they have now is most users use a lot more traffic than they used to. Once upon a time, network speeds were too slow for most users to use their internet connections for much more than email, some instant messaging traffic and light web browsing. Nowadays, even web browsing is anything but 'light'. Web sites are full of streaming video, interactive online gaming and other social media sites that can eat up a lot of data usage.
The ISP's have gotten themselves in trouble, and I don't have a lot of sympathy. You created a monster, and now your are complaining to everyone that its messing up your nice furniture.
Metered service the the logical solution.. indeed the only solution in my opinion. Its going to suck for a while to be sure. They are going to overcharge for usage and find most of their users simply just won't bother to use the internet. Here in Canada we've gotten used to not being able to enjoy things that other countries have.. hell as it is most of the cool stuff that would COULD be using more bandwidth on (Pandora, Hulu, etc) is not even available here. So it could be a lot worse. Those services will eventually get popular here too.. then what are you going to do? I'm looking at you Shaw.. Telus.. Rogers and Bell. Figure this shit out soon, before the Goverment gets tired of your whining and starts getting all net neutrality law on your asses.
3 comments:
The electric utility doesn't offer me different voltages of service at different prices..
Not true, both electric and water provide tiered service prices depending on your potential usage.
If you have a need to 'burst' 400L/min or 400kVa then you have to pay for that privilege. The only difference between internet as it is priced now, and electric/power is that internet does not have metered usage.
Well its estimated, but only because they can't monitor your usage remotely (yet) and they have to pay meter readers to come to your house and record the usage. If your usage spikes in a month you pay for it, it just takes a few months till they can take a reading and adjust it.
My point is that the they don't charge different 'plan' fees for different sizes of pipe or wires that go to your house. You don't have a 220v line to your house and told that you can use as much as you want as long as you don't overload the wires. Thats how until recently broadband was offered. Here's a 5mb pipe, go nuts.. its unlmited until you go over some undisclosed limit that we set and didn't tell you. They have caps now of course, but thats only cause it got out of their control. If it wasn't unlimited, they shouldn't have advertised it as such. Now that everyone has been trained to expect that, its going to be very hard to go back to the way it should have always been, metered usage.
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