Do you guys got bandwidth limit imposed by your internet provider company?

[Everlast]

I've never talked about this on the internet but my bro and me don't have cable tv or satellite tv, and so we started seeing tv on internet sites such as hulu.tv, justin.tv and such. Although i really wish to see it on a normal tv set, i admit having no commercial is awesome. But now i can't after Onelink (my internet provider) contacted us we where downloading and exceeding the limit by ALOT. They charge $10 more for every 10 gigas u exceed. Whats the limit? 40GB. We used to spend 100GB to 500 gb watching streams and entire series on hulu.tv and Tonight Shows. But now we cant.

I was wondering if you guys got this same problem, as its a pain the ass and it takes out the fun in the internet. Problem is where i live 1 company provides the service per area. Meaning the zone is monopolized by Onelink' who has the fastest internet speed of 3mb.

[Psuni]

I don't think this has hit North America yet -- I believe the limitations on your bandwidth is only going on in Europe/Australia. I may be wrong though.

Personally, I know AT&T doesn't limit my bandwidth whatsoever.

[Armand1880]

I live in Michigan, USA and use Comcast cable internet. They have a 250GB monthly cap. If you use more they make you pay a fee, and if you do it twice in a month they suspend your service. Sucks, but at the same time I've never hit it - with downloading Steam games, torrents, and Netflix.

[Psuni]

Originally Posted by Armand1880

I live in Michigan, USA and use Comcast cable internet. They have a 250GB monthly cap. If you use more they make you pay a fee, and if you do it twice in a month they suspend your service. Sucks, but at the same time I've never hit it - with downloading Steam games, torrents, and Netflix.

So it is in North America then? Wow, that sucks. I know you haven't hit it yet, but I think I'd switch providers if AT&T started in on that ridiculousness.

[Leak]

So there's still lots of crappy internet providers in the US, but Hulu et al as content providers don't allow access by us Europeans with proper internet connections - like the 40Mbps down/4Mbps up without a cap here?

Somethings not right here...

[Friar]

Originally Posted by Psuni

I don't think this has hit North America yet -- I believe the limitations on your bandwidth is only going on in Europe/Australia. I may be wrong though.

Personally, I know AT&T doesn't limit my bandwidth whatsoever.

We don't get hulu over here.

It's a provider specific thing. Here in the UK, there are providers with limits (usually going from 2GB-20GB), providers with unlimited (with a "fair usage policy" which is supposedly really high. We've got that, and i regularly stream HD content, and play games online), and providers with true unlimited broadband.

I would say, given 3MB is your highest speed in the area, you live in a rural area, with old cables, which can't sustain high volumes of data traffic, so the limit is there to allow other to use it, without being painfully slow.

[Chyron8472]

Originally Posted by Psuni

Personally, I know AT&T doesn't limit my bandwidth whatsoever.

I also have AT&T DSL. I only play $25 per month for it, and I don't have a GB-per-month download cap either.

I forget what my bandwidth limit is, but dslreports.com says it can clock my bandwidth to a server in Toronto at ~2.5Mbps download/~500kbps upload.





That being said, when I download files from the net, it usually shows up as downloading at 300-400kbps.





My parents went on a trip to Europe recently and my Dad says that, while he was over there, not only did he have a download limit but he also got bandwidth speeds that could only rival dialup. He might have only been using his iPhone, I'm not sure. Even if he was, getting only 50kbps download speeds on a iPhone is pitiful. You can't even watch Youtube videos at that speed.

[Shwoo]

We have a 40GB download limit at the moment, the highest limit we've ever had. I was fine with download limits until I found out that Americans usually don't have them. Then I was jealous.

It's why I often use YouTube to watch TV. I'm sure there are more legal options, but YouTube's filesizes seem smaller.

Originally Posted by Everlast

They charge $10 more for every 10 gigas u exceed.

Just ten dollars for a whole ten gigabytes? Wow, that sounds really reasonable to me.

[Debbie82]

I live in Connecticut and use Comcast cable internet via ethernet. I used to have Linksys Wireless-G Adapter, which was going fine on my old and new computers, until my new computer started getting a Blue Screen of Death upon start-up on June 5. Weeks later, we found out that the Linksys Wireless-G Adapter was the cause of the BSoD, and we tried switching to Technet Wireless-G Adapter, but that didn't work, even though it was connected. We ended up having to switch my computer to wired ethernet, so now it's connected and doing fine.

[Friar]

Originally Posted by Chyron8472

I also have AT&T DSL. I only play $25 per month for it, and I don't have a GB-per-month download cap either.

I forget what my bandwidth limit is, but dslreports.com says it can clock my bandwidth to a server in Toronto at ~2.5Mbps download/~500kbps upload.





That being said, when I download files from the net, it usually shows up as downloading at 300-400kbps.





My parents went on a trip to Europe recently and my Dad says that, while he was over there, not only did he have a download limit but he also got bandwidth speeds that could only rival dialup. He might have only been using his iPhone, I'm not sure. Even if he was, getting only 50kbps download speeds on a iPhone is pitiful. You can't even watch Youtube videos at that speed.

My speed is usually around 8-10 mbps. In fact


When i did it earlier, around 7ish, it was 9mbps.

[Everlast]

Originally Posted by Psuni

I don't think this has hit North America yet -- I believe the limitations on your bandwidth is only going on in Europe/Australia. I may be wrong though.

Personally, I know AT&T doesn't limit my bandwidth whatsoever.

Psuni i dont live in Europe, i live in Puerto Rico which is a US territory with US federal law and our own state law. So legally (not geographically) we are under North America. The problem is in my home we are 4 people and i dont think that cap limit is enough for all of us.

Now 250gb sounds about right! I feel stupid to have to stick to a company which offers you an internet service but barely allows you to download and watch streams.

Originally Posted by Psuni

So it is in North America then? Wow, that sucks. I know you haven't hit it yet, but I think I'd switch providers if AT&T started in on that ridiculousness.

Im not european, i live in the americas and we can get access to hulu and all those sorts of streams. Though i think its unfair to now allow europeans to watch Hulu.

Originally Posted by Shwoo

We have a 40GB download limit at the moment, the highest limit we've ever had. I was fine with download limits until I found out that Americans usually don't have them. Then I was jealous.

It's why I often use YouTube to watch TV. I'm sure there are more legal options, but YouTube's filesizes seem smaller.


Just ten dollars for a whole ten gigabytes? Wow, that sounds really reasonable to me.

Sorry just went to my bro and he told me its $17 bucks per 10gb in excess. I still think its expensive!

[Soultaker]

Originally Posted by Chyron8472

My parents went on a trip to Europe recently and my Dad says that, while he was over there, not only did he have a download limit but he also got bandwidth speeds that could only rival dialup. He might have only been using his iPhone, I'm not sure. Even if he was, getting only 50kbps download speeds on a iPhone is pitiful. You can't even watch Youtube videos at that speed.

Internet speeds in Europe really vary from country to country, and between providers, as do fair-use policies and bandwidth limits, so I don't think a generalization makes a lot of sense.

I happen to be hooked up to the university network for now, which is great because it's a 100 MBit link with a 50GB/week external upload limit and no download limit. (But note that with speeds like that, the weekly upload limit could be exhausted in only three hours if you wanted. :/)

In the Netherlands you can generally get unlimited access at around 20 MBit/s but expect to pay in the range of €40 to €50 per month for it. There are broadband alternatives which are a lot cheaper (€15 to €25 per month) but then you might have a lower speed cap and a transfer limit. You get what you pay for.

[puzzlebox]

I live in London, and our broadband has no caps or limits. No idea what it costs though since it's included in my rent. Speedtest results:




My folks, however, live in rural Australia. Landline broadband is not an option so they're limited to mobile access using a USB modem.

Coverage is patchy to say the least. They can pick up one provider only in the living room (but nowhere else in the house) and another provider only in the bedrooms. So they are signed up to both ISPs and have a USB modem for each one, switching depending on the part of the house they're in.

I've also seen them run the modem out the window on a long cable and stick it on a chair in the backyard to get better reception... and put it in a little plastic lunchbag if it starts to rain.

Don't know what the speeds are like, but my little bro plays online games over that connection so I guess it can't be too bad.

When the family lived in town, they used a broadband plan where you were "shaped" if you exceeded the download limit - the ISP just limited your download speed until the month rolled over. Downloads during off-peak periods (some time in the late evening til 6am) weren't counted towards the quota. If a contract must involve a cap, I think this is my preferred option. It seems less painful than being cut off entirely, or charged an additional fee.

[MRN]

I have ilimited interwebz and thank god for that xD

[JedExodus]

Originally Posted by Chyron8472

Even if he was, getting only 50kbps download speeds on a iPhone is pitiful. You can't even watch Youtube videos at that speed.

Oh but you can, maybe you gotta pause a bit and put the quality down, but it's do-able. My internet's highest speed was 60kbps untill quite recently. I'd cry if I had to go back to it though

[KuroShiro]

When I was in France, free.fr offered unlimited telephone (with mostly free worldwide calling), TV, and internet for 30 euros a month. As far as I have seen, it is the best system in the world.

Japan is about twice that expensive, but offers similar service (except the cheap telephone. Telephone service there is the worst of any industrialized nation, by far) along with fairly cheap fiber optic, all uncapped.

[Avistew]

Originally Posted by KuroShiro

When I was in France, free.fr offered unlimited telephone (with mostly free worldwide calling), TV, and internet for 30 euros a month. As far as I have seen, it is the best system in the world.

I had the same service for the same price with SFR. Free phone to most countries (never found one I wanted to call that wasn't free), unlimited internet and cable TV (that I didn't even used but hey, it was part of the deal so whatever), and a cellphone thrown in without a plan (so, unlimited calls/texts to that phone but needed to pay to call/text from it) that I never used either because I just don't use cellphones anymore.

Now we pay almost 80 CAD for telephone (only 2 hours per month nation-wise, no international plan, free calls in town) plus Internet (limited bandwidth, we go over it pretty much every month, and that was before I started using skype so I'm scared for my next bill), and no TV.
And that's the only provider here. It sucks.

EDIT:

[Everlast]

Well here it is, oficially its 3mb thats how their promo goes.

[Debbie82]

I've got this:

[Tor]

Over here I haven't seen download caps for years. The biggest ISP tried that when DSL was just launching (1 GB / month even) but as I recall, all their competitors offered unlimited service. Naturally that restriction went away fairly quickly.

Given how people use the internet these days, (digital distribution, media streaming etc) capping upload or download seems ridiculous to me. If you don't have enough bandwidth to offer your customers unlimited service, it means you should spend some of those profits on upgrading your backbone network and other equipment.

Originally Posted by Chyron8472

I forget what my bandwidth limit is, but dslreports.com says it can clock my bandwidth to a server in Toronto at ~2.5Mbps download/~500kbps upload.


That being said, when I download files from the net, it usually shows up as downloading at 300-400kbps.

That's because they are specified in different units! Watch that B; lower case b means bit, capital B means byte (8 bits). 2.5 Mbps = 320 kBps. (Use Google calculator for quick conversion)