Data Usage

Monthly data allowances have been part of our Internet service offering since 2001.  Over recent years we actually increased montly allowances to the levels they're at now and provided a tool to help customers monitor their usage.  Only a very small number of customers actually encounter problems with the advertised numbers.

I don't think it's about screwing people, it's about the lack of competition. No competition and the isp can do as they please. Look at foreign countries, they offer much higher bandwidth caps & faster speeds at lower costs (in many cases) than what we get here in the us. It's about the competition; until enough people say "enough is enough" or there is competition to prove elsewise, you have to follow what is being set as rules. Consider this, if you're on the premier 30mb line with 250gb month/bandwidth paying about $65/month you're overpaying. keep in mind bandwidth only costs them pennies per gb, this isn't opinion, it's fact. So let's say you're paying 2cents per gb traffic for 250gb traffic. Thats a backend cost of $5 IF you use all 250gb of traffic, otherwise that cost of bandwidth they didn't allocate to you becomes pure profit. Keep in mind they say they're upgrading networks etc and it costs a lot. That's true, Look at the higher & higher caps on internet speeds and the cost per mb/s goes down. What this basically means is we are paying more than we should, BUT aside from the pure profit, some of that probably does go into extra network infrastructure, which means further down the line reduced overall costs per the amount of bandwidth and actual speed we get.

Think of it this way, it's a control factor. Would you truly want 100% of people able to download unlimited or use their bandwidth in an unlimited fashion? A person could download 10 terabytes (10,000gb) of data and pay the same as someone who barely does any web surfing and let's say uses 30gb. There would be no reprecussions and no way for the isp to say "hey, that's too much load on our network" to limit it. In this case they set that control factor so they have the ability to legally limit everyone and keep a control factor in place.

Hopefully this all makes sense and better explains it. I don't personally think bandwidth caps are necessary nor fair, but then again I think the caps should be higher (at the very least) to help deter the fact that our internet speeds are getting faster, the servers offering the speed and connecting us are faster, therefore we consume more bandwidth. If that bandwidth doesn't increase you go over much easier. Consider if you're an avid netflix streaming fan, you can easily blow through that 250gb in a month JUST on netflix if between your family you watch a few movies a day. Just food for thought. I'd be happy with caps that were about 2.5x what they are now. It would better represent actual usage versus speed of the line.