I suppose 100GB / month is probably fine for most users. At the same time though, I don't like the idea of having a limit on my own internet usage period.

Just don't see this as a step forward. I think I'd switch internet companies just to find a company that had unlimited usage.

I wonder why the cap on all of the older and cheaper plans and not the new 60mbps? Could it be they want us to buy the new more expensive plan, just so we can be capped again? I'm a Charter customer if they cap me I will lower my Internet package. Plain and simple why should I pay for a service I can't use. All of the idiots that don't will be stupid to give into them.

I pay $60 a month for internet alone, $153 a month total. I should be able to download all I wish. Charter is a known monopoly in the areas they offer cable, with no real competition to bring prices competitive.

That's not going to be feasible much longer. They all clam unlimited usage as long as you don't exceed the cap.

What's interesting: at 15mbps download, you could technically achieve your cap within your first 15.5 HOURS of the month. ((100gb*1024*1024*8)/15000kbps)/60s/60m = 15.53 hours

I was afraid something like this was going to happen. Ultimately I think it comes down to profiteering. I doubt they will EVER lower the cost to people that use little bandwidth, yet, I find it likely that they will impose higher and higher rates on those that use high rates. With streaming HD video services like netflix popping up you could reach that 100GB limit faster than you think. I would estimate that my monthly rate is somewhere closer to 300GB. And that's just download. I have an always on torrent client server.

Charter will now have bad network service to match their bad customer service.

I wish in here we would have such big usage caps (Europe, Portugal) o_o
We don't have connections faster than 30 Mbps. Even though some ISPs already have unlimited traffic, many have caps like 20GB limit on downloads + uploads for a 10Mbps connection or 40GB limit on a 20Mbps connection (both have something called "happy hours", with unlimited traffic between certain times during the night, for example between 1am and 9am).

darnit, now its gonna take me forever to download the entire internet...

I hate the idea of this, though I hardly ever reach those levels. I wish they would also implement something like ATT where if I don't use my bandwith one month, it would roll over to the next.

The cap really don't make all the difference, I think there are very few people downloading over 1,2TB/year.

The only issue might be if I'd have a very busy month, and need to download 150GB, I'd have to spread it over 2 months.

In Belgium ISP's are just plain stupid!
There's a 15GB limit,which is way too little even for the average internet fan. In order to download your material you need to download the first 10-15GB on highband. Then they set you on lowband.
You basically will be using internet 24/7 on lowband to get an additional 30Gb downloaded per month; or, pay eur. 27 per month extra (which is outrageously much for many).

Imagine you're running a business and you just capped 100GB,you all of a sudden can't receive any mails anymore?
I hope the ISP will understand this and not cut but lower internet bandwidth instead to say dual ISDN speeds (112kbs up/dn)

On high times (and I view a lot of streaming TV) I use upto about 45-50GB download a month, that translates in viewing TV every evening after work for about 2-3 hours.
On low months I'm not using more than 2GB.
For the end user 100GB should be enough, and whatever is getting close to the limit can always be downloaded a next month.

Though I agree that I wouldn't want ISP's to make abuse of it, and keep on lowering the monthly limit.

Australia typically throttles speeds on the mainstream plans to 64kbps (8kB/s) once you reach the tiny caps we have. The uber expensive ones, or the ones with VoIP get 128kbps or 256kbps.

QFT.

I just switched from Charter to a slower DSL connection. I was regretting the switch until I heard about this.

I hope they at least implement a meter of some sort that tells your how much you have left...

Mainstream wireless protection is a joke and is far too easy to hack into. What if someone goes over their limit by a few hundred gigabytes because their neighbor found it more convenient to use someone elses internet?

Watching Cable TV generates about 1 gig an hour. How can they argue that internet needs to have these usage caps? They might as well put a cap to how many TV shows we can watch.

WPA/WPA2 will stop most 13-year-old kids trying to be l33t with others' connections, but the problem is most people still use 64-bit WEP or nothing at all.

Usage meters aren't entirely accurate because they only measure traffic which reaches the client they are installed on.

I agree with noahjwhite. It is just another way to gouge their customers.

Usage Meter goes on the router not the computer, dumbass.

Sure, very few people download 1.2TB of content to their hard drive each year. But in a day and age when even YouTube has HD content, it's easy to hit that limit. If you like to stream Movies from Netflix, or with all the Networks offering streaming of some of their episodes, TV shows, or playing games online, VOIP, all of these things are bandwidth intensive.

That depends on which usage meter you use.

OMFG, I ain't going to move to a Charter occupied city. But again, TimeWarner will follow too.

When they announced their "unlimited" service, we knew the caps would be announced.

It is a response to people dumping their cable for sources like Hulu, Netflix, and network streaming websites.

Take my situation - I put up with crappy delivery of HD channels from charter because I could get basic then add HD for $8 a month. I watched only HD channels. Then they changed the policy - HD channels were lined up with expanded cable service and the HD channels were free IF you had expanded cable. Then, for the 5 channels that were HD only you had to pay the "reduced" fee of $5/month. Somehow basic -> expanded for +$25/month -$3/month HD reduction sounds like an increase to me. Don't forget your $10/month for HD tuner box also. *sigh*

My response. Screw it. My 42" tv is my computer monitor now, and I started using Hulu to watch a handful of shows I care about plus occasional movies. I was going to add netflix - but now comes the cap.

Essentially Charter (and just about every cable company) is saying that we have to pay for TV service from them whether we get it from them directly or over their internet service.

It wouldn't be so bad if they actually offered unlimited plans everywhere - but with such a limited initial market, we'll have to buy $300+/month business plans!

Oh well, I guess this is good. Its time to finally dump charter completely. If I'm not gonna have enough bandwidth to download my distros, patches, movies, shows, and maintain my web site, I might as well reduce my internet to emailing and just use cellular broadband that I carry in my pocket. Then I'll buy the movies...

...and I guess its a good thing I don't really game any more. Don't have to worry about online games, digital downloads, and Steam eating up my precious bandwidth.

Don't see what the problem is. I watch an occasional video on netflix but at the intermediate quality I doubt it comes to more than a GB per movie. They wouldn't have to throttle anyone if wasn't for all the f***ing pirates of movies/HD TV. Maybe they could have unlimited use of approved channels but caps on bittorrent (fair cap to allow download of legit isos for example). I suppose pirates will just find a way around it.

I can see you havent thought out your point at all. Good job being ignorant. If you seriously think pirates caused them to cap bandwidth your on more drugs then rockbands in the 80's.

has to do with more people using the internet and them either not having the money to upgrade thier network ( or refusal to do so ) And a huge load on thier 1990's built infastructure. Along with more and more internet delivered content and communication they have a hard time keeping up with the load so thier users who use thier net constantly compain about slow speeds THIS cap is thier awnser to not expanding thier network with thier expanding needs.

However if they did what verizon did and saw this coming they would have put the money into thier network and wouldnt be dealing with this now. Everyone said verizon was crazy for spending billions on thier network overhauling it for this new century. Personaly i think everyone else was cerazy for not doing it. now these networks will lose thier revinew while verizon sucks it up. That of course is until people stop using the internet (lol) or they shell out the cash to move beyond thier 56k network. (56k as in anchient.)

Here in Aus the bandwidth usage can be monitored from your isp's website (which doesn't count towards your cap, along with alot of other things). Its very accurate and gives you estimates on how much you can download for the rest of the month etc.

At the moment i'm paying $70 aud or $47 usd for 60gb a month on a 24gbit connection which ain't bad but wow you guys should consider you self's lucky. I can't believe your complaining about 100gb's or even 250!

I'm on Charter. I guess I'll have to go to DSL. I have Vonage, 3 Everquest2 accounts. XBox360 using Netflix. 3 people on Ventrilo for Game chatting. Sorry, charter, pay too much subscriptions now, not going to bow to you.

Putting CAPS on something that is becoming an everyday utility isn't right. Oh, you can only use so much water, electric, gas? don't think so.

I have a 60GB usage limit with a 15 cent per MB penalty for going over the limit costing me $129.95 on Telstra ISP here in Australia.

Thanks for pointing out that Australia has bad ($hit) quality ISP's.

I would take 100GB caps any day thank you very much

Woopps let me correct that 60,000MB not 60GB. Cheap Australian ISP's lol..

What ISP are you on and in what state?

if you don't like your provider then change providers. The Internet is NOT a necessity, if you don't like the rules then don't play with their toys.

This has the potential to:

1. Slow piracy through the torrents.
2. Speed up the internet.
3. Piss a lot of people off.
4. Rip of consumers who's internet is being stolen (hopefully it will help catch internet thieves).