Bill to give FTC power to veto broadband capsFollow

If building a dam was as easy as chopping down a small tree, you'd almost have a point.

I will say that, though I may be wrong, the last time this discussion of bandwidth caps came up, I thought that comcast was setting a 200GB limit per month, which is pretty damn high. Did that change?

My ISP is capped at 60GB. If I go above that I have to pay a surcharge up to a max of $25.00 above my normal bill.

I get a consistent 7mbs. I can pay a little extra for even higher speed and 100GB/mth, but there's really not much you can't do with 7mbs and 60GB. It is very difficult to burn through that cap. It took me 2 weeks going full bore when I tried. When I don't try I'm in the 8-15GB range and even that's high compared to most people.

I don't think these caps are really that big of an issue. It only effects a very small portion of the customer base. You don't regulate a luxury industry over a business decision that may **** off a very small percentage of the companies own customers. It's ludicrous.

The best is the argument of treating it like a utility. Your utility bill is based on your usage for the month...it is running like a utility.

Obvious comment is Obvious, but what is sufficient now will not be in the future. The cable companies are looking to create "reasonable" caps now, in order to benefit from them later.

Relevant quote is Relevant:

Lots of services have a minimum monthly bill with increasing costs on higher use. Hydro for example, I could flip my breaker for the month and I'd still get a bill. This is no different.

No, but if you need that level of service I see no reason why a company shouldn't be able to charge you more than the guy who checks his email twice a month for providing it. I DEFINATELY don't see why the government should be able to tell them not to.

I can rent a cheap car, but if I need to move a couch a car's just not going to do it, I have to spend more and rent a truck. The system you want forces everyone to rent the truck. If I don't like that rental companies prices I can go to another rental company, if it's the only rental company in town, well, I either suck it up or I don't rent a vehicle.

It is not the governments job to tell a company what service level to provide or what price to charge for it.

The primary difference here is that the cable company is the only game in town because the government allowed it to be that way through giving them access to utility easements and other line rights. The gas company or electric company or whoever is allowed to operate as a monopoly through land usage in an area because they give up part of their corporate freedom. Cable companies get the same land usage privileges allowing them de facto monopoly status (since no one else can just lay down the infrastructure to compete) and yet are mysteriously exempt from the same controls the government places upon everyone else using that same land.

Cell phone plans have much more legitimate competition.

The guy who needs to check email twice a month doesn't need broadband, dial up will do fine for him. They advertise their lightning fast speeds, "Download movies at a click of a button!!!oOMG1", etc. Yet they want to penalize me for doing what they are advertising I can do with my connection I pay for?

The start-up costs to install in the existing areas would be magnitudes greater than it was to install originally. Every road in the area would need to be bored under to install the sleeves and cable which everyone else got in before the pavement was laid. Every house would have their front roadside easements torn up, trenched (try not to hit the other wires & pipes!), laid with cable, regraded and reseeded/sodded. The cable company got it all in when the lot was nothing but a sheet of rough graded dirt.

A real solution would be to force the cable companies to share their infrastructure, like the government did when they broke up the phone company monopolies. This is why you can get DSL through multiple parties but only one guy in an area offers cable. If the cable companies aren't up for that, then treat them like every other company running lines through the town.

We still have several dialup providers here In fact, I've fixed PC's for several people who were still on dialup. That was a shock, trying to connect to the internet and hearing the modem go off

I wanted to add that I just don't think you have the perspective I do. There are areas of my state that until very recently didn't even have electricity much less phone lines or cable service. When I signed up for Road Runner, I was in the beta group for Lincoln, and it was $50 a month 6 years ago. Guess how much it is now? $65. Speed has increased marginally from where it started, yet my monthly costs have gone up $15.

Edited, Jun 19th 2009 1:53pm by Wint

Well that separates you from us then

Just want to point out that as of a call to Charter last week, my speeds have doubled (5 to 10Mb) for a whopping $5.50 increase to $55.49 / month.

I'm still in favor of regulation, but Charter is definitely starting to look more customer-friendly these days. Maybe that whole bankruptcy thing is changing some perspective within the company.