Comments on: Bandwidth Hogs Get Butchered

The Skinny: Cable Companies Disconnect Customers Who Download Too Much

[kaiyo4u]

Posted by brianbwb at 04:31 AM : Sep 08, 2007

I bought hughes for my mom who lives in the country. They did not sell the package as unlimited and they do offer tiered speeds. The cost for a small home office (speed necessary for two or more computers) is about $70.00/month. I bought the equipment outright and only pay for the subscription.

www.hughes.net is the link to get their info.

The only drawback to satellite is the weather. They say the rain and clouds do not make a difference to delivery, but they do. If you have a cloud with a lot of water content it will refract the signal and you will lose packets. Sometimes to the point stopping the download.
Other than that it is a good service except for the price... I still feel it is too high, but with cable here I am paying $50.00/month and am not getting the speed I was with the satellite.

[Dennis_Nilsson]

Here in Sweden we have fibre direct to home and pays about 40 USD for 100Mbps, and 4 dynamic IP-numbers.

SB Bredband is building real broadband with fibre to every apartment and commercial local they own. And then they let several Internet operator sell broadband connections to the users. Only the fibre is owned by SB Bredband. And SB Bredband is owned by the community. Read more about it here:
http://www.svebo.se/Page____11519.aspx

"The network is built of optic fiber (fiber to the home) to make sure it will have enough capacity to meet the demands of today and tomorrow."

[brianbwb-2009]

Posted by horse3farm,

It would be interesting to know if Hughes sold your plan as "unlimited" or not. Many ISPs do, and then they limit your bandwidth, this is fraud, pure and simple.

[horse3farm]

I live in the country and have Hughes satellite service for Internet. I have no complaints with speed and very happy with the service.

At Hughes, they provide a link where you can check your usage anytime of day. They publish the limits of bandwidth you can use in a 24 hour period, (depending upon your level of service.) If you exceed it, you don''t get cut off, you get a slow crawl. After about 10-15 hours...it picks back up.

Also the bandwidth issue is not applicable with Hughes between and 3am and 6am ET. You can download to your heart''s content.

Now that''s a service oriented ISP.

[brianbwb-2009]

If you sell unlimited broadband, by law, ethics, and common sense you should deliver unlimited broadband. To stop service to a customer is breach of contract, it doesn''t matter what the customer is downloading, or how much. If you can''t deliver, then don''t promise.

Why does the press continually present a one sided view that ignores the efforts of ISPs that seek to have fraud codified into law?

[kaiyo4u]

I had DSL when I lived in the NW. I''m currently running cable now. I preferred DSL, just because of tiered speeds. The only problem with speed for residences is that the fastest phone cable you have coming from the phone hub to your house is CAT 3 and in some instances of older homes you may only have CAT 2 cable. Even in some new subdivisions, the phone company is pulling CAT 3 to new homes. We were installing CAT 5e in new homes. But the bottleneck is in the copper from the phone company.

[the_quietman]

Jimmyc1955
The 384 number, and other numbers, are sold as a maximum throughput speed. not a guaranteed speed, but it is still faster than cable within the same size community. Granted the networking classes I took were the shorter managerial rather than "habds on" this fact was strongly emphasized. The actual speed is a factor of the server being accessed and you have no control over that regardless of your connection speed.

[dems08]

If most people now think their broadband is unlimited... why would telling them there is a limit make them download more? They just don''t want to change their marketing. They have been dragging their feet on increasing bandwidth in many areas. Even though many companies have been receiving government funds to speed upgrades. They even fight some communities in court when local governments try to upgrade the systems themselves to attract new residents. Japan is years ahead of the US on these issues, where they have average speeds about 40 times faster than our best.

[archangelric]

jimmyc1955 - your comments belie a total lack of understanding of the issues.

L8C6 is right; face it. The basic math is that it is cheaper for a government to provide services without a built in profit or the overpaid execs of comcast; where government is usually more expensive than business is illustrated by this article: business can, perhaps illegally (in violation of their franchise agreement), cut off service to high cost clients, government can''t.

walt1944 is right, when comcast bought att broadband they raised the price of internet access, then offered a discount of the price increase IF you combined it with TV (they had promised for the merger to be approved that they would not raise -cable tv- rates). Then they restructured rates making more rate classes which raised people''s prices. The merger was approved by the FCC under Bush''s presidency, ignored by the FTC. so, yes, "THANK YOU VERY MUCH REPUBLICANS EVERYWHERE! "

I suggest you try better to understand the issues that people are saying and research your facts before making comments that are at best ill advised

[jimmyc1955]

walt1944 - can you explain to my how your inability to pay your comcast bill is a republican/bush issue? The competition was for phone companies who own the phone lines to your house - not your cable service. That is regulated by your local community and they decide who gets the contract.

If your mad at comcast - get DSL? If you can''t get it its because your copper loop is a poor loop. That in a nutshell is why there is no competition for your low money service. It would cost Billions of dollars (and is costing billions of dollars for Verizon''s Fios network) to replace that copper.

So your irrational anger at Bush is misplaced - since nothing he, Republicans or anybody in congress has done or not done impacts competition for cable systems.