Congressman Pledges Anti-Bandwidth-Cap Bill



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I hope everyone is also insisting that their congressman support Massa's bill and that their senators take up similar legislation in the Senate. This idea of a rollback of service, particularly for someone who is paying premium rates for "turbo" connectivity, enrages me. Do we need the same monopoly busting AT&T legislation of a few decades ago?



If the ISP's wanted to sell less bandwidth, they should have done so from the outset.  ISP's "changing their minds" after selling a service, should be breach of contract.  I think the bill should not only pass into law, but then all ISP's that enforced a cap after the fact should be forced to renumerate their customers who paid for a service without a cap.





Can this be a breakthrough for GEEK survival =)



"...a business has a monopoly on a specific region."


sounds like Canada. we only got rogers and bell dominating the market and giving tight bandwidth caps. you only get 60GB/s with $46 /month

their cheaper plans are even worse, such as 2GB with $19.99/month



I'm not opposed to reasonable tiered service structures as long as they are (a) reasonable and (b) disclosed up front. Cell phone plans are already structured this way.  X amount of usage per month is covered in your base plan and overages are billed at Y rate.  If you know you're going to use more you pay for a plan that has a higher amount of usage included in the monthly fee, which of course costs more per month.

20GB is not reasonable. Since it is entirely possbile to monitor and record the volume of traffic going through any network pipe, the ISPs should be made to base their caps on statistical usage data for their networks and they should be required to disclose those statistics. 

I am sure that the ISP's concern is that as Internet traffic continues to grow they are going to have to expand their infrastructure to accomodate the traffic or face huge congestion issues.  (Bandwidth is not infinite as one poster suggested.  It is limited by the hardware on the network at any given time.  Once that hardware has reached its capacity, bandwitdh can only be expanded by adding hardware.)  They don't want to spend the money without being able to pass the costs on to the consumers.  Fine.  My 75 year old mother should not have her rates increased if all she does is use email and browse some websites.  I'd say it would be fairer for those who consume more bandwitdh to pay for more bandwidth.

I'm also willing to bet that the disclosures on the caps and how they are enforced are not clear.  Heck, cell phone plans require translations into plain English for most folks.

I agree with the posters who said to write your representatives in Congress.  Make your voices heard.


I Jedi

They couldn't kill NN, so this is their next big thing they're trying to maximize their so called profits on. Pitty.



I think this is almost a case of false advertising. Think this: a 40gb/month cap means that if one was downloading 24/7 on a 30 day month, they could not download in excess of 120kbps without risking exceeding the bandwidth cap. So, you are allowed to use constantly only 120k on a 5M connection... sure sounds like some sort of false advertising to me. Its ridiculous they are trying to bill bandwidth like water, bandwidth doesn't have that kind of scarcity. In the case of water, the aquifer only hold so much, but the pipes can pretty much supply anyone with as much as they want. In the case of broadband, there is no aquifer, potential bandwidth is infinite, the only limiting factor is the pipes that bring it to you. If too many people try to use it at once, the feed pipes will get congested. The sensible way to account for this is to put limiters on the pipes to each household, so they only get so much bandwidth at once, instead of giving them fast big pipes and not expecting them to use them. Bandwidth caps and overage charges treat bandwidth as if using more of it increased costs, but in reality most of the costs involved in running an ISP are fixed. Once the infrastructure is there, the cost of maintaining it is rather small. Sure every once in a while it needs upgraded, which must be happening or else everyones connections would run like bunk. The pricing structure they are trying to force through is entirely a profit grab and a marketing gimmick, it increases the margin on ther broadband products and requires them to spend less upgrading infrastructure, plus, as it discourages using the net to get one's video, it pushes customers towards their grossly overpriced cable products... which still aren't a la carte...

Consumers, vote with your wallet! Myself, I will pay more per month for lower bandwidth for an uncapped service to avoid one that has a cap. I use my internet, and expect to get the bandwidth I pay for!



I hope that all of you that have taken the time to post on this board have also taken the time to write your congressman about this issue.



Voting with your wallet only works if there is a real competitior.  Internet service in much of the US is a duopoly at best.





I like the image at the bottom.

I agree with the congressman 100%, also.  Someone needs to regulate the internet providers, otherwise they walk all over the consumer.  There's no reason why anyone should have a cap when using things such as HD content usage over broadband.

"Here's this very nice product that we've sold to you to use, but we don't want you to use too much of it."

Pure B.S.



a frekin men

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