What Consumers think of Internet Bandwidth Caps

On my Podcast we have talked quite a bit about the comcast 250gb bandwidth caps. That discussion has lead to a significant amount of feedback from my listeners.

A email I received from Dan in Missouri that was read on last nights show, has resulted in about a 100 emails in less than 12 hours of it’s release I wanted to share it with the readers of the website. I think it sums up exactly what many of us think.

Todd,
 
I’m a long-time listener, since the early double-digits of the GNC, but it’s been quite a while since I’ve emailed you.  I thought with all of the stuff going back and forth about bandwidth caps and per-usage charges it was time to weigh in on the issue, because as you’ve said many times, how it ultimately shakes out will have huge consequences.
 
I’ll say right up front that I’ve always been a very heavy Internet user (since the mid 90s) and I am very much against caps for a lot of reasons.
 
We have several computers in our house, 6 actively used workstations with different family members watching IP TV, Youtube, etc and a computer that runs Ubuntu feeding IP TV and other media to our living room TV, mostly using Miro (open-source video podcatcher media software).  In addition to that, we have a Tivo and a Nintendo Wii in the living room. Both of which seem to hit the Internet a lot for updates and media catalog data.  We have various podcatchers running periodically on the network too.  I do some things to save on bandwidth, like using Autopatcher for my Windows updates and running a Squid proxy server to cache and control web access, but regardless, with all of that and more going on, it wouldn’t take long to hit any cap.  If cable companies really need to limit bandwidth to keep their infrastructure going (which I think is debatable), then, like you’ve said, they need to have in place a mechanism where heavy users can at least pay for a temporary overage, or better yet, allow us to pay a premium for unlimited (or much less limited service).
 
I think that the fact that these caps and limits are rearing their ugly heads right now is not about keeping the providers networks going or “customer experience” at all.  If it was, then they are saying that they didn’t see the current level of usage coming. That’s either nonsense or gross incompetence on their part.   We’ve all been hearing the traffic projections for years.  They’ve had plenty of time (and certainly money) to build infrastructure to handle traffic without caps if they wanted to.  The fact is, they DON’T want to. 
 
I think the cable and phone companies finally started to smell the coffee not too long ago and realized that we were basically routing around them, getting our media and phone services from other sources, and letting other businesses grow without them getting their piece of the pie.  This is all about them trying to break other business models that are growing and have grown, and force their customers to come back to them and drink from their well.  If that doesn’t work out for them and they wind up creating premium tiers (which I think they will), then they’ve created another quick revenue stream.  It’s all about the money and/or control, not even a little about “improving the customer experience” as they claim.
 
As far as the arguments that the up-to-now arrangement isn’t fair, because “grandma in Wisconsin is paying the same as a geek streaming media on 3 computers all day long”, that’s nonsense too.  Here’s why…  If it hadn’t been for all of the geeks, early adopters, and heavy users pushing the envelope and driving revenue to the companies on the far side of the Internet pipe, effectively paying for those services to grow through ad revenue and flat-out popularity, those services that they hit so hard would have never grown as they did.  There would be no place for grandma to GO on the Internet (at least no place near as interesting or useful).  Unfortunately, grandma and a huge number of other new, mostly clueless “light” Internet users (you can call them AOL crowd 2.0) hear that they’ll be paying less than “heavy, bandwidth hog users”, they don’t know any better, so of course, it sounds great to them.  Then the media cartels. can turn around and say, “See, most users WANT caps!”.  Well, yeah..numerically speaking.  A lot of people like sausage too, unless they see what goes into making it.  Most of the masses don’t understand what bandwidth caps really mean and are perfectly happy not to, for now.
 
The other thing is, and I hate to sound like a conspiracy theorist here, but have you noticed that a lot of the talking heads that are saying that bandwidth caps and other limits are “fair” and “have to happen, because it’s unavoidable”, sound a lot like paid shills? They keep using the same catchphrase-laden double talk to try and justify their position.  What’s the old adage? “Any lie, if repeated a lot, starts to sound like the truth.”  I think that’s it.  I’m not saying that everyone that says that they think a tiered Internet and/or caps are a good thing is a shill, but I do think they are out there in significant number and are disproportionately loud.
 
One of the points I keep hearing over and over is that, “Internet access is like a utility, and you wouldn’t expect to get water or electricity for free would you”?  Well, no..but the government (local and federal) have already set a precedent in this area.  Suppose it’s not like a utility..it’s more like the public school system and the taxes that support them.  You pay one flat rate for taxes for your local school system, regardless of how many kids you have (or even if you don’t have any).  A lot of people don’t like that, but that’s the way it is.  What do you think would happen if a bunch of people got together and said that they weren’t going to pay the educational part of their taxes because they don’t have as many kids? (I’m pretty sure that some people have tried that and you can visit them in jail).    You can apply the same thing to libraries..the precedent is usually the same there.  You check out 5000 books or don’t use it at all, you pay the same taxes, regardless of the fact that the heavy library user has certainly caused the library’s expenses to go up.  Is that fair?  I don’t know.  But the precedent is there.  To be honest, you can’t equate bandwidth one-for-one with government services, water or electricity, but as long as we’re throwing questionable analogies around, one works as well as another.
 
I’m currently on a Charter cable connection, but fortunately where I live in the St. Louis metro area, I have choices.  There are a couple of different DSL providers in the area in addition to the cable provider.  So far Charter hasn’t put any caps in place, covertly or otherwise.  If they had, I’m pretty sure that I would have hit them by now and triggered at least a phone call or nastygram.  If I do get something like that I’ll try to to work around it with them by seeing if I can pay more, then if not, I will dump them like a bad relationship and get on one of the DSL plans in the area.  I’ve known this time was coming for a while and have long-since moved my email away from my provider so that if I need to jump, I can do it pretty painlessly and not look back.
 
When this all shakes out, I think a lot of the providers will let you pay for more access.  I think that they don’t have this right now so that later when they do offer it, it will look like they’re doing us a favor as opposed to gouging us for even more money than they have been. 
 
This could be a gravy train for them in the short term, but they are setting themselves up for a big fall later if someone like Google, Amazon, or some big consortium of many such companies come along and do an end-around on them.  I think that will eventually happen, as there’s just too much at stake for the services on the far end of the pipe to NOT do something like that.  Time will tell.