6 ms·

TLDR; people who use more data have to pay for more data

• Kuinox 7y ago
  The US does not have unlimited data on home internet subscription ?
  • dudul 7y ago
    Not everywhere. I always thought data caps were mostly in place in areas with ISP monopoly, but I'm moving to an area where Comcast is the only viable option, and they don't have any cap. Maybe it's in populated areas where the infrastructure is not that great. It's hard to really grasp the logic since they claim that 98% of their customers never hit the cap. So what's the point?
    • rietta 7y ago
      To keep someone from reselling their bandwidth for commercial purposes. Like running lots of servers or starting up a wireless Internet provider and using the residential connection as back-haul/peering.
      • pfisch 7y ago
        It's way too slow to do these things. Also the reliability would be terrible. Also a TOS violation anyway.
      • Kuinox 7y ago
        In France nothing stop me from doing this.
    • jraph 7y ago
      Maybe some/many would use more if they weren't capped?
• jmkni 7y ago
  Not in the UK. I've literally never had an ISP contain about bandwidth, and I use a lot of bandwidth.
  • mprev 7y ago
    Either you’re pretty young or you’ve been lucky. Unlimited broadband was not the norm in the UK around ten years ago.
    • GordonS 7y ago
      Can confirm, metered and capped services were the norm, even after ADSL became mainstream.
      • newaccoutnas 7y ago
        Especially if you're paying for one of the better services, like Andrews and Arnold etc. They have caps listed on their broadband pages. There have been regular stories where customers have been sent letters about their bandwidth usage even though they're on 'unlimited' plans. The ISPs generally refer to clauses in ToS, which (imho) doesn't mean anything can be 'unlimited'.
    • jdietrich 7y ago
      OFCOM and the ASA banned the use of the word "unlimited" to describe broadband plans with a usage cap, which pretty much killed caps overnight. More recently, they banned "up to" speed claims - the advertised speed must be representative of the actual speed of the majority of users during peak hours. Broadband providers must also offer a guaranteed minimum speed, with the right to cancel the contract without penalty if that speed cannot be achieved.
    • jmkni 7y ago
      I was at Uni around ten years ago (actually it's more like 12, getting old!), I remember we had Sky Broadband (in a flat full of IT students) and seriously abused it. They never complained.
  • 7y ago