Charter Implementing New Cable Download Caps For All Users

[Apoptosis]

As a Charter Communications Cable Internet Customer I found this interesting...

Yesterday we cited an anonymous insider at Charter who informed us that the company would very soon be implementing new caps. Today, Charter's Eric Ketzer confirmed the plans, and informed us that Charter's new, $140 60Mbps tier will not have any limitations. Speeds of 15Mbps or slower will have a 100GB monthly cap, while 15-25Mbps speeds will have a 250GB monthly cap. 'In order to continue providing the best possible experience for our Internet customers, later this month we will be updating our Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) to establish monthly residential bandwidth consumption thresholds,' Ketzer confirms. 'More than 99% of our customers will not be affected by our updated policy, as they consume far less bandwidth than the threshold allows,' he says.

Source

[DMB2000uk]

I guess at least they publish a definite limit, a lot of ISP's over here say fair usage policies apply, but then never say what the limit is.

Dan

[Major_A]

I guess at least they publish a definite limit, a lot of ISP's over here say fair usage policies apply, but then never say what the limit is.

Dan

Isn't that policy common in the UK/Europe? This is a new concept to us here in America and frankly I think it sucks. Isn't the point of having a high speed line having the ability to acquire large amounts of data? I mean hell if you check out 3 HD trailers on Apple in a day that's close to 500MB. If this is the new "norm" we should have the ability to view websites as text only. All those damn advertisements and embedded flash movies use bandwidth.

[kappage]

they got the same sort of thing over here, they say the your internet is 'unlimited' and it turns out to be only a gig or two, but they get you in the fine print, they mean unlimited for standard web browsing which would struggle to use more than a gb a month! its stupid really.

[martini161]

this is why i switched from cable to FiOS. with their terrible customer service, cable was just begging me to leave! now i get a 20/20 line, an HD box, 2 SD boxes, and phone for only 10-20 bucks more a month i payed for an 8/1 line, 1 SD box and comcasts crappy VoIP. i commonly have 1+tera byte a month usage (and thats just up) and verizon doesnt say a word

[geokilla]

At least you guys don't throttle and aren't limited by a 60GB cap limit. I usually use around 30GB a month, sometimes going up to 55GB when I'm downloading games.

[Sporg]

My hillbilly service allows me to use up to 10GB download per month. Oh, and I had better not go over 1GB in a day. I have broken their rules more than once, and so far they haven't charged me. I think they do go after some people because a buddy of mine as been hammered with a bunch of overage on more than one occasion. He downloads a lot of stuff. The only time I go over is when downloading operating systems.

[camaroguy1998]

With bankruptcy rumors flying around for Charter. My bet is they are looking for new revenue avenues!
Also they are probably trying to control any type of competition!

Charter CTO Marwan Fawaz told attendees of the CableNEXT conference in Santa Clara last year that "eventually, we will go to a usage-based solution." It's an idea being toyed with by several carriers; AT&T and Time Warner Cable are both currently conducting trials that charge users up to $1.00 per gigabyte. The idea appeals to investors who like the additional revenue, but it also allows carriers to monetize and/or control alternative video delivery.

Same source as Apoptosis' original post!

[Kougar]

this is why i switched from cable to FiOS. with their terrible customer service, cable was just begging me to leave! now i get a 20/20 line, an HD box, 2 SD boxes, and phone for only 10-20 bucks more a month i payed for an 8/1 line, 1 SD box and comcasts crappy VoIP. i commonly have 1+tera byte a month usage (and thats just up) and verizon doesnt say a word

Living in the 7th largest US city here and we don't have FiOS. Just cable, dsl, or AT&T's Uverse which I hear nothing but complaints about. Somewhat ironic that Time Warner is expanding their cap limit trials, I was just starting to get quite happy with their service. I've attempted to measure my monthly GB usage... only thing that I've discovered is that I can use 1GB a day with just a few hours of decent quality internet radio! Games like CoH Opposing Fronts require ~900MB of patche files. Then there are all the beta OS's that I download via TechNet to play with, TV episode watching & movie streaming from sites like Hulu...

When I first heard about Time Warner implementing download caps in Beaumont, TX I called them up and expressed my concern. I also asked for some data on how much bandwidth usage I typically use, they stated they didn't have the capability or tools to measure that info and couldn't give me a number. Hmm...

[hnzw_rui]

Yeesh, they'd better start rolling out that 60Mbps tier in California. What with Netflix, Hulu, Crunchyroll, TechNet, etc, I can easily gobble up 100GB in a week.

[Kougar]

Yeesh, they'd better start rolling out that 60Mbps tier in California. What with Netflix, Hulu, Crunchyroll, TechNet, etc, I can easily gobble up 100GB in a week.

Any idea how large a 480P movie on Hulu is, out of curiosity? Couldn't have been hardly any compression I was guessing because it looked pretty decent on a 1200P monitor.

[davidm71]

I heard they are going out of business?? I hope so. I hope they get bought up and split into pieces. Company has a monopoly.

[Pengwin]

I heard they are going out of business?? I hope so. I hope they get bought up and split into pieces. Company has a monopoly.

yeah, i live in the STL area and its charter or AT&T. I chose AT&T, my friend has charter and he hates it but locked into a 2 year contract. That said, charter cable TV is now only $9.99, just got a flyer in the mail, looks enticing.

Apop, get AT&T DSL, 6 mbp's down, 786 kb up, no limit.

That said, if charter says "More than 99% of our customers will not be affected by our updated policy" than whats the point of the policy? Make a handful of people pay 140 bucks a month?

[blitzymighty]

I'm actually on the same AT&T plan as Pengwin, and it costs me 73 dollars a month. However, last Fall I read a news story about how AT&T was considering starting download limit caps, too. I wrote to them to complain of course, and I haven't heard anything else about it. Anyone else?

[Skippman]

I heard they are going out of business?? I hope so. I hope they get bought up and split into pieces. Company has a monopoly.

yeah, i live in the STL area and its charter or AT&T. I chose AT&T, my friend has charter and he hates it but locked into a 2 year contract. That said, charter cable TV is now only $9.99, just got a flyer in the mail, looks enticing.

Apop, get AT&T DSL, 6 mbp's down, 786 kb up, no limit.

That said, if charter says "More than 99% of our customers will not be affected by our updated policy" than whats the point of the policy? Make a handful of people pay 140 bucks a month?

You also may want to look into our Uverse internet which they offer at up to 18mbps now in the St. Louis area. You CAN purchase internet only via Uverse if you want as that is all I have. I believe the going rate for a 10Mbps connection (which I have) is $55 for retail customers.

As for Charter being a monopoly, can you define that please? A monopoly on what? You have many other ISP choices in the St. Louis area. There's us (AT&T), Brick Network, Earthlink, etc. There's also a few wireless providers and there's always satellite.

Now I will agree that Charter is fortunate that they don't fall under the same Terrif rules AT&T does for selling unbundled services to competitors. We have to allow other company's access to the AT&T network for FCC mandated prices. I don't recall ever hearing of a cable company that had to do the same.

[camaroguy1998]

I heard they are going out of business?? I hope so. I hope they get bought up and split into pieces. Company has a monopoly.

I'm betting he's referring to a CableTV monopoly!

[Skippman]

I heard they are going out of business?? I hope so. I hope they get bought up and split into pieces. Company has a monopoly.

I'm betting he's referring to a CableTV monopoly!

Any other company is free to invest thier money in building they're own network. I hate that monopoly claim. Ameren has a monopoly because they spent the money to wire up the electric grid here in STL and build the generators. You got another choice in power company? (Don't say Quiver River)

At least with TV and Internet you DO have choices. Satellite, Uverse, Cable, and good ole antenna's. Intenet? You got DSL, Uverse, Cable, Dialup, WiFi, and Satellite.

[Sporg]

Intenet? You got DSL, Uverse, Cable, Dialup, WiFi, and Satellite.

Not exactly sure what Uverse is, but don't forget about data cards. I have a 3G data card that is decent and I know a few people here at work that use them at home as an ISP.

The charges are kind of outrageous on these, so maybe it isn't a viable source for your average home user.

Oh, and then there is WIMAX by Clearwire which should roll out to more cities this year. From the prices that I've seen it's not too expensive. And then coming up will be the LTE networks from Verizon and ATT.

[Camride]

I finally started measuring my usage with BitMeter and I usually average about 100-150GB per month. January I went a little crazy(got a new HD) and hit about 400GB down and 150GB up. That's with my pathetic 512kb up speed. I have TW Cable and they haven't complained. I pay for 10/.5 and I have gotten an upwards of 2MB down late at night.

I wish we had FIOS here though. I can't understand how it's not available here when we have Research Triangle Park and a ton of Tech companies.

[Skippman]

Not exactly sure what Uverse is, but don't forget about data cards. I have a 3G data card that is decent and I know a few people here at work that use them at home as an ISP.

UVerse is AT&T's second gen broadband internet service service (Official spec is VDSL). It's mostly known for the IPTV Service that AT&T pushes but it also is an internet service. It's diffrent from traditional DSL service.