You had better be ready cuz its comming here next man... just like everything else that has ever happened in the worldHankMan said:
Poll: Useage based billing
- Thread starter DarkBlood626
- Start date
Yeah, 9GB, not fast, stuck with it for the next year. Anyone who complains about anything less than 20GBs does not know of South Africa...Tubez said:0.o wtf?brandon237 said:Lol. I have a... wait for it... 9GB cap. I cannot use steam, and I am stuck with it for the next year, and what is more, the only reason it is 9 and not 5 is because the provider was FORCED to upgrade as it wasn't giving enough bang for bucks spent on it.Sightless Wisdom said:
Yay 3rd world service provider roping my mom into contracts
When I read the topic title I thought you were going to propose a new MMO billing method. And as someone who only plays WoW a few hours a week (Xfire says 2 hours in the last 7 days) I'd love a cellphone-prepaid-like model for MMO's.
As for internet providers, it sounds alright I suppose. Making heavy users pay more for taking up more bandwith space sounds pretty logical. That is, when the pricing's right. The situation in Canada sounds plain silly, but it's not unreasonable to make people pay more when they use more.
As for internet providers, it sounds alright I suppose. Making heavy users pay more for taking up more bandwith space sounds pretty logical. That is, when the pricing's right. The situation in Canada sounds plain silly, but it's not unreasonable to make people pay more when they use more.
One of my inet connections has a 10GB cap, and i'm living in germany. But thats because of the involved technology (UMTS). The issue with that tech, is that all users in an area share the same bandwidth. Thus, in theory a single user could achieve very high speeds, yet if all users use the net simultaneusly, the average bandwidth per user is rather low. For some strange reason, instead of traffic shaping they opted for rather low monthly traffic caps. The biggest insult to one's own intellect, is that they still sell these kinds of connections as "flatrates". How? Easy, once you hit the traffic cap, you're demoted to 56k modem speed - so IN THEORY, there is no cap.... riiiiiiiiiiight!
Well, in theory there will always be a cap because you're billed by finite billing cycles and can only go at a finite speed. So even for my "unlimited" 20Mb/s internet the cap would be about 86,400 seconds per day * 20Mb/sec * 31 days in the longest month = 52,312.5 GB per month cap. I should sue for false advertising.Lyx said:
Fuck no. All usage billing would do is punish people who transfer more data for being above the "average" amount customers use.
Correct, ressources are always limited anyways - if at most, the connection speed. What flatrates usually refer to (sans a "fair use"-policy in fineprint) is being online at max speed 24/7 (though, for obvious reasons, no ISP will actually tolerate this). What i consider fraudulent in my above qute, is that those UMTS connections are sold under the premise of a high-speed flatrate, when actually, they are capped at a certain trafficlimit to a speed, at which one cannot efficiently surf websites with reasonable effort (here, the result of reaching the cap, is having to retry loading a low-bandwidth website four times, before it is loaded correctly - thats how worse it is. In principle, after exceeding the limit, you're demoted to torture-mode, yet what you are paying for, is a supposed "flatrate").Dags90 said:
What is my specific issue with that behaviour? Quite simply: dishonesty and inflexibility. I acknowledge that achievable bandwidth is capped on an area-level, rather than user level. I also acknowledge, that traffic usage after a certain limit becomes a premium, via supply & demand. Soooo, the sane solution to me would be:
1. Do traffic-shaping based on traffic-usage in that month by the user. However, NOT blind traffic-shaping... if no one else in the area accesses the net right now, there is no need to artificially lower speeds. Instead, one's own speed would simply depend on how much traffic one used, and how much traffic other users in the area are using right now.
2. If you want to get higher priority, even after having used lots of traffic, that's a premium and costs extra.
That would pretty much represent UMTS reality. BUT: Then they could no longer advertize such plans at super-high speeds - they would need to acknowledge, that the actual speed depends on user-activity in an area. Furthermore, they could no longer advertize it as a flatrate, because continueing to use the net at premium speeds requires extra charge above a certain limit.
Soooo, my argument is: This plainly is fraud. They are using an artificial billing model to keep up the illusion of something, that quite simply does not match reality.
No need, we have never heard anything from the company with regards to the internet. It's the same with his phone contract. Also, I download a shit ton of stuff.MetalDooley said:
I'm on a monthly capless service in the UK. Deliberately went for a company that didn't have a cap, because I don't like to try and work out how much I've used in a month (some months I do hardly anything... others there's a Steam sale or a shiny distro released).
Wouldn't go back onto a capped service unless I didn't have a choice.
Wouldn't go back onto a capped service unless I didn't have a choice.