Comment The all-you-can-eat bites back... (Score 0, Flamebait) 847
Ok, this isn't a question of the cable companies screwing the users. It is a matter of users screwing each other and the ISPs by getting greedy.
"WHAT!? your a corporatist pig!" nah. I'm not, I'm a realist. The reality is this: You wan't a T1 worth of bandwidth but you don't want to pay for the real cost of it. A T1 line runs at the same or SLOWER download speeds as your [cable|dsl|satelite] feed usualy. Now looking at the price for that T1 (actualy it is more like an oc-3 that your provider has to hve to get you that fast speed.) we see that 1.544Mbps costs a minimal of $600/mo. This isn't taking into consideration the over-loading the ISPs do to keep thier costs low. Even with the over loading you are looking at around $80 per month in cost. Not including the equipment amortization, employees, facilities, etc. This usualy doubles or even triples the cost of that bandwidth to $240.
"What is overloading?" Well, you didn't REALLY think that your ISP kept that full 6Mbps cablemodem bandwidth available to JUST you did you? You did? heh, i've got some shorefront land in arizona for you.... ;). Statisticly, the average user only "connects" to thenet (call this a session) once a day. For maybe an hour a day. This is why you are called an end user. It's only as needed. now using statistics, this means that 24 people can use that same bandwidth and not slow each other down. If a provider whats to further cut thier costs, they can "overload" the link and push that number of users much higher. Typicaly I've seen over 600 homes on a single 6Mbps channel on the cable modem. 6/600 = .1Mbps. Ahhh! now we see what they REALLY intended on you actualy making use of on average. Just a measly 128kbps. 2x the price and bandwidth ofyour old 56k modem.
"Ah, I see now..." Yes, you do. :) so if we take this logic that the ISPs use, and we look at a user that averages 1544kbps instead of 128kbps, we can see that it's about 12x as much usage. (all of those napster, morpheous, etc peer to peer hosts, shame on you.) You can realisticly expect 12 * $40, or $480 per month in REALISTIC pricing from your ISP. Yeah... now we see it getting close to the true cost of providing that bandwidth. Pretty close to the $600 average for a T1. On a T3 it's more like $450 per 1.5Mbps of bandwidth. On an oc-3, it gets lower, around $380 per 1.5Mbps of bandwidth.
"Then why did the [cable|dsl|satelite] providers sell it so cheap?" Well, it's called "bait and switch". At least *I* equate it to that. With the internet gold rush of 97 ~ 2001 everyone thought that bandwidth costs would drop. When it all crashed, the priced STOPED droping like a rock. Now, the ISPs are stuck with ridiculously low contracts they gave out originaly in an attempt to capture as much of the consumer market as possible. Again, greed is the culprit here.
"Ok, I can see why they would up the price then. But I have a contract... Can they do this?" Yes, you have a contract, but most are setup so that the ISP isn't really locked into the price you agreed to. (gotcha). If you read the fine print I'll bet that most of you agreed to allow your provider to raise thier prices if your usage pattern doesn't fit the average user profile. IOW if you were a greedy consumer, that wanted everything for free (or as cheap as possible), then you HAVE to expect to pay for what you use.
"whoa, I DID get a free ride! I'm ashamed of myself for being greedy. *sniff*" Heh, yes, you should be ashamed of yourself, for being gullible. Face it. The reality is that the 30GB of MP3s you download every month, and all those movies costs money. IMHO I believe that the average user is still no more than 4 times a busy in internet traffic thatn the average 33.6k dialup user was back in 97/98. If you fit this profile, then you have no worries. But, if you are a greedy end user, that takes all they can grab at the all you can eat dinner buffet, you had better be aware of those clauses, and eat what you really can use. If that happens to be 30GB per month, then be ready to pony up the $$$ for those Gigs.
Conclusion: Yeah, expect to get billed personaly by the morons that suckered everyone into buying into the net as being the new medium. All those "business experts" that lost thier hats. The bills have to go somewhere. And they allways go downhill. To you, the consumer. Now I also have to say it's not thier fault compeltely. It's a combination of: greedy end users, greedy business types, greedy providers. Greed, greed, greed. Didn't your mother teach you to play nice and share?
Lesson: Nothing is free in reality. Get what you can afford, and beware of those offers that seem too good to be true.
personal note: I don't have any sympathy for anyone that whines about thier extra fees if they are one of the greedy types that wants it all for free just because it seems like they can screw the providers based on a contract. You screw them, they screw you. Honesty and integrity really do get rewarded.
"WHAT!? your a corporatist pig!" nah. I'm not, I'm a realist. The reality is this: You wan't a T1 worth of bandwidth but you don't want to pay for the real cost of it. A T1 line runs at the same or SLOWER download speeds as your [cable|dsl|satelite] feed usualy. Now looking at the price for that T1 (actualy it is more like an oc-3 that your provider has to hve to get you that fast speed.) we see that 1.544Mbps costs a minimal of $600/mo. This isn't taking into consideration the over-loading the ISPs do to keep thier costs low. Even with the over loading you are looking at around $80 per month in cost. Not including the equipment amortization, employees, facilities, etc. This usualy doubles or even triples the cost of that bandwidth to $240.
"What is overloading?" Well, you didn't REALLY think that your ISP kept that full 6Mbps cablemodem bandwidth available to JUST you did you? You did? heh, i've got some shorefront land in arizona for you....
"Ah, I see now..." Yes, you do.
"Then why did the [cable|dsl|satelite] providers sell it so cheap?" Well, it's called "bait and switch". At least *I* equate it to that. With the internet gold rush of 97 ~ 2001 everyone thought that bandwidth costs would drop. When it all crashed, the priced STOPED droping like a rock. Now, the ISPs are stuck with ridiculously low contracts they gave out originaly in an attempt to capture as much of the consumer market as possible. Again, greed is the culprit here.
"Ok, I can see why they would up the price then. But I have a contract... Can they do this?" Yes, you have a contract, but most are setup so that the ISP isn't really locked into the price you agreed to. (gotcha). If you read the fine print I'll bet that most of you agreed to allow your provider to raise thier prices if your usage pattern doesn't fit the average user profile. IOW if you were a greedy consumer, that wanted everything for free (or as cheap as possible), then you HAVE to expect to pay for what you use.
"whoa, I DID get a free ride! I'm ashamed of myself for being greedy. *sniff*" Heh, yes, you should be ashamed of yourself, for being gullible. Face it. The reality is that the 30GB of MP3s you download every month, and all those movies costs money. IMHO I believe that the average user is still no more than 4 times a busy in internet traffic thatn the average 33.6k dialup user was back in 97/98. If you fit this profile, then you have no worries. But, if you are a greedy end user, that takes all they can grab at the all you can eat dinner buffet, you had better be aware of those clauses, and eat what you really can use. If that happens to be 30GB per month, then be ready to pony up the $$$ for those Gigs.
Conclusion: Yeah, expect to get billed personaly by the morons that suckered everyone into buying into the net as being the new medium. All those "business experts" that lost thier hats. The bills have to go somewhere. And they allways go downhill. To you, the consumer. Now I also have to say it's not thier fault compeltely. It's a combination of: greedy end users, greedy business types, greedy providers. Greed, greed, greed. Didn't your mother teach you to play nice and share?
Lesson: Nothing is free in reality. Get what you can afford, and beware of those offers that seem too good to be true.
personal note: I don't have any sympathy for anyone that whines about thier extra fees if they are one of the greedy types that wants it all for free just because it seems like they can screw the providers based on a contract. You screw them, they screw you. Honesty and integrity really do get rewarded.
