well i guess the internets better get better so i would want to pay more for it. hint hint

There goes moving to Canada.

"Get them hooked then charge them more"...

I recall a day when there were no ATM fees with *any* ATM, then once ATMs caught on -- fees, fees, fees.

This is not a good sign.

Hey, good luck to all of you who are "passing" on High Def DVD players for HD downloads. At those rates, you can download 1, maybe 2 HD movies a month? And then you only get to keep them for 24 hours.

I remember when it was a "per minute" charge on internet usage, then it went to an "all you can eat" because people demanded it...

I remember when data use on cells were "per KB", now most major carriers offer an "all you can eat" model.

If these new costs will get me a faster connection, then I'm willing to pay for them - short term. I'm fairly sure that, given time, they'll be forced back to the "all you can eat" model. At least until the *next* big upgrade.

@webwbr:
And I recall when internet access was charged by the minute, and how happy everyone was when we finally broke out of that business model.

Unfortunately, local ISP monopolies give consumers very little choice, and the telecom industry isn't exactly known for welcoming honest competition from little guys...

Everyone can help by starting now, and not doing any business with these people. If you start feeding them, they'll just get bigger and hungrier and greedier. Don't give them money, and they'll be forced to change their business model.

Consider that an HD movie tax, the ISP way to capitalize on content delivery.

wow. what the fuck. So for those of us who game online and download and uploads lots of content (because we run a website) and do school stuff online and facebook and chat all the time, were fucked?

I mean jesus, I just uploaded my pics from my Japan trip to my site and they were around 7GB and then I uploaded another 2GB to Facebook.

im fawked! Im constantly Folding@Home and downloading from iTunes and stuff.

FU broadband providers

In the end, all-you-can-eat pricing will prevail. Dialup internet service providers tried this same thing with "X minutes of connection time" and it didn't last. Given as much stuff that's set to be streamable/downloadable, there's just no way consumers will put up with it.

For $29.99 a month I will pay a team of hackers to point that Japanese ISP satellite at your house...

[gizmodo.com]

This seems like a good old step backward, disguised as progress. Awesome.

Ha, that picture was on the cover of my error analysis text.

There are still ISPs who understand that home bandwidth needs are ever increasing. XMission charges $55/month for 50M/50M on fiber with a 500 Gigabyte cap, and yes it is backed by enough bandwidth to serve what you buy.

[xmission.com]
[stats.xmission.com]

@CruJones: That's assuming compression will NEVER improves, and that anyone besides that guy uses that particular ISP. If a company uses that charging scheme, another ISP will come along with unlimited usage (you remember the 90s, right?).

@MagnoliaBoy: Exactly, as soon as it happens just cancel your crap, switch to a non douche company and if we run out of those, god help us?

@pashdown:

Haha, all I can think of when I see XMission is Maddox.

Fuck the RIAA!

Er, I mean...

Seriously, though... this is really lame. In an age where there are operating system software updates that can be hundreds of megs, where there are music downloads, movie downloads, people running small businesses from their homes, this is really lame. 500 gigs is probably good enough for the average household, yeah, but there are plenty of homes now that are far from the "average household". BitTorrent aside, people are going to need more than 500GB. 1 TB and I'd stop my bitching :P

@DustyButt:

That's actually a really good point... let's hope that cable companies follow directly behind the cell phone companies nowadays. What with Sprint, AT&T, Verizon, Tmobile all trying to compete with one another with their "unlimited plans", hopefully the same model with migrate over to ISP's.

*crosses fingers*

I'm almost done building my own satellite. Just give me another month, guys. Once I launch that thing (out of a cannon which I have also constructed) it will be free-for-all.

This is why the communications grid in this country, which is a vital part of our infrastructure, needs to be publicly owned. This idiotic faith based idea that if we all just hope, REALLY hard, then maybe the private companies will do what's best for everyone, is dooming us and our economy.

Take out the overhead, take out the million dollar salaries, and we can drop these huge fees that keep people from being able to afford high speed internet. If the public owns the grid, then we can do what Japan is doing, and what private companies here either can't or won't do, and invest tax payer money in a state of the art communications infrastructure, and not just sit around and wait for it to be profitable.

If we own the lines, then private companies can be service providers, but without this regional monopoly bullshit, keeping competition in the market, but restricting them from jacking up the rates, capping the speed, or censoring the content.

The more people with internet connections, the cheaper that connection, and the faster that connection, the more content they'll purchase, growing our economy. It's simple demand-side economics (the kind that actually works). Or we can give up on net neutrality, and cross our fingers that the telco's won't screw us all over for some short term profits.

Gonna have to disagree with the big G on this one (Gizmodo, not google...) Well kind of...

I believe things may get to the point where most if not all ISP's will have some kind of cap / pay-per-GB pricing scheme, people really REALLY like all-you-can-eat intrarwebs, so all it would take is one company to take advantage of that fact and undercut everyone else.

Either way, customers should NOT be footing the bill for the lack of infrastructure that causes bandwidth to be so "expensive". I fully expect this to blow up in the faces of the ISP's dumb enough to try this.

Walt Mossbergs coverage of this issue with crappy broadband in the US is very interesting. It's the first part to the "I phone will be 3G in 60 days" article. He pretty much says that the US Government needs start putting the smack down on ISPs and create a sense of urgency to make the development of broadband internet as important as say the US interstate highway system.

Here is a link to the video: [www.beet.tv]

I too live here in Bend, and was shocked to see what the local ISP was planning. My college had a cap of 2.4 gigs a week which boiled down to 4 kbps. I couldn't even stream music on the weekends without having to check my bandwidth usage every few hours.

I was actually looking to sign up with them and break off my apartments free wifi, but instead wrote them a fairly nasty email outlining why I won't e signing up with them... ever. I will wait out FIOS and continue to use my free and unlimited bandwidth.

GCI in Alaska used to have a 5GB cap with $20 per GB over. this wasn't even that long ago. maybe 2-3 years. they have "unlimited" available now... like $140 for a bundle (phone / tv / internet) with 5Gb/s speed (options up to 10Gb).

our T1 through them was even capped at 20GB for awhile. one month we magically used 20-30x more than we ever had in the past... got a $22000 bill or something ridiculous that month.

If this is what these companies are going to be doing from now on, then the number of broadband users in the US will drop drastically. Not only are these companies screwing over the consumer, but they're screwing over themselves in the long run. These damn companies need to get their act together or close down so that better companies can step in.

@lpranal: I'm not sure how you're disagreeing, exactly.

@matt buchanan: Gizmodo: we're screwed
Me: Short term we're screwed, but the sucky ISPs will all get darwin'd

And then in comes Google Wi-Fi and the market has to readjust. Der.

@Kanti_V2: Right. The 2010 U.S. census costing $14B is completely efficient. The government always does things more costly and always has more overhead. The $10M CEO salary pays for itself 10x over in the cost savings that privatization brings.

I hate to say it, but it's somewhat reasonable for internet carriers to be worried about very high bandwidth users. To be fair, the people who download 1TB/ month end up using a disproportionate amount of bandwidth, dramatically raising costs for carriers.

In the end, I think it's fair for them to charge higher prices for extreme users (maybe >1TB).

Our little college town has has this pricing scheme for a long time. I hear its common in smaller towns.

fuck Canada's oldschool tellicom company monopolys!!!!!

@The Hoff: By that logic, the granny who only reads email from her children should be getting a refund each month? No, the way an ISP works is that it is a shared system. Some customers use more, some use less. The entire usage is divided over the subscribers, not by punitively going after the power users.

This same argument was made by telcos about people who nailed up their phone lines in the 90's. Yet, they weren't handing out refunds to grannies either.

All I can say is that you should count yourselves lucky you're not in the UK.

Almost all BB packages here are 40GB/month and the best that most of them can offer is 8Mb down.
And, including line rental (which I don't know how that works in the US), all but the cheapest ones are probably more expensive than the package you're quoting here.

CHILL PEOPLE!!

This is only 1 damn ISP.. It's not like Canada is a small town with one ISP.. It's a freaking country.

Over here on the West side... BC CANADA..

I get 3mbps down, with a 60gb upload limit and unlimited download..

If I exceed to far past my monthly upload every month... then I get a warning.. and later disconnected if I keep doing it to much.

So it's great :). And they have the best privacy policy :P.

Here in NZ, I pay NZ$40/month for 15GB of traffic per month. Not sure on the speed, but probably the best you can expect is 2Mb/s. Excess traffic costs $5/5GB. That's pretty typical for NZ broadband -- actually, it's a better deal than you find at many ISPs. "All you can eat" basically doesn't exist here, and I doubt it ever will (at least, not in the forseeable future).

I'm not sure what you guys' big problem is, though. From what I read, you already have traffic-capped broadband, it's just that the ISPs don't tell you what the caps are. You may as well ask for honesty from your ISPs -- it'll at least help you focus on what you really need.

Oh I forget to mention.. for that 3mb line of mine, it's only 35$ a month. :)

I feel sorry for you east side Canadians lol.

I would like to take this opportunity to tell everyone that Canada's Rogers ISP truly sucks the bag. As does their cable television and home phone service. They are a national shame.

I say we pool our money and launch our own satalites and build the "Free Internet" where corperate greedyfingers are kept in check. The only way I see a good future for the internet, is if it falls into the hands of the people.

Another thing I forgot to mention LOL...

The name of my ISP is.. TELUS! :P.

But i'm thinking of switching to Shaw Cable Internet.

It's only 42$ a month.

You get 10MBPS download speed.
1MBPS upload speed.
100GB Monthly transfer.

Policy's like this are why the U.S. is becoming a second world nation. We are missing the Technological Revolution and as a result our citizens and corporate structure cannot/will not be able to compete in the modern/coming age.

Wow, that's only AU$58.
Considering I have the best connection deal I could find in my part of Australia ($90/mo for 20GB @ "8" Mbps, and the speed is more like 5 Mbps at best due to distance from the exchange, with transfers over that being throttled to dialup speeds), I think you have little to complain about if you end up with deals like that.

why the hell would anyone stick with this ISP and its outrageous pricing? They are utterly nuts.

the problem is that the tech is begin outdated by demand, they can't keep up with all the new bandwidth demands so instead of actually having a new network they want to throttle the old.

Uh, yeah I hope this guy and Time Warner shrivel up and die.

Um - when are the internet retailers going to get a clue about what is happening and put an end to this type of crap before it gets any traction? The e-commerce ramifications alone should be enough to stop this kind of poor vision in its tracks. Plus, as existing ISP's continue to push this idea, they seem to be forgetting that Verizon will really need some broadband subscribers in a couple of short years to cover that 4.8 billion they have to write a check for. This short-sighted approach is pretty much creating Verizon's future customer base - way to go guys! What a great business plan - piss off all of your customers leading up to new competition moving in. And everyone calls giant corporations evil - see there is enough evil to spread around to smaller companies too.

@The Hoff: Wrong, and completely insane, the government when run by the industries it's supposed to be regulating is inefficient, otherwise it always costs less than private enterprise. Privatization ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS leads to higher prices and lower quality for the consumer, I defy you to prove me wrong, or find an example to the contrary. For example, public power always costs less than private electric companies, when California privatized its power, prices more than doubled. It's simple logic, inefficiency is one thing, but it pales in comparison to running something for profit. And not only for profit, but for growth, which is needed to attract investors. And how do they grow when they control a part of our infrastructure? By raising prices, and cutting back on costs, same as every other business when it's saturated its market. And the costs they cut are jobs, quality, and re-investing in infrastructure, which is required by publicly owned utilities, so we get power outages, loss of service, busted aquifers, etc., etc. (which we tax payers have to pay for to bail them out).
Only an idiot would put the future of their country into the hands of some greedy short sighted businessmen, who couldn't get anything more than an MBA (by far the easiest degree ever).

I think there are very few countries around the world which have 1 a low flat fee for unlimited download. I was in India 2 years ago and when I look at the tariff, it was unbelievable. Unlimited download plan costs about Rs. 35,000 per year (approx $1000) with download speed of 2 Mbps and upload speed of 128 Kbps. From what I see, only people who work in IT can afford this and basic DSL starts at Rs 500 per year ($12.5) at speed 512 Kbps down and 128 kbps up with max download of 2 GB per month. Good thing I did not have to use my Skype too much.

LoL don't worry though folks you get FREE Virus protection. Never mind the fact that in this instance they ARE the virus...

I too, live in Bend. Luckily, I'm on the side of town that can get cheap 7mb/s DSL. I'm currently with Bendbroadband, but that's gonna change REAL soon. EFF those guys!

Also.. That 50gig limit is for their "gold" plan. The standard package caps you at 10gigs. That'll take me all of 1 week to burn through.

it will only be a matter of time before the "legal" content sellers start giving their customers bandwidth credits. Unfortunately, the in between will suck.

we lay down when gas prices get out of hand, we lay down when our country goes to war..(and yes I was there) we lay down when our president has an affair and blatently lies to the public and makes a mockery of our judicial system and we will just lay down and take it up the poopshoot when they decide to rape us for bandwith... I love this country. It is amazing how the majority rules but the minority governs... ahhh fuck now im all depressed

Crap. My parents live in Bend. Guess I'll be careful next time I head home for vacation. (Yes, they actually recently switched to BendBroadBand over dialup .. oops)

@Kakkoister:
Telus is terrible. For $40/mo you get "up to" 6Mbps and 60GB of combined download/upload usage (not unlimited download, as you've stated). That "up to" part is key- rarely does my current Telus connection even breach 5Mbps, let alone go anywhere near 6.

At my previous place, I had Shaw, and it was fantastic. It's the same deal at $40 (only 5Mbps, but more reliable), but for $10 more you can get 10Mbps, 100GB/mo transfer.

Still, it's sad that Shaw's (and Canada's) best residential service is $93/mo for 25Mbps and 150GB transfer cap. I don't really care about the caps right now, but for a country that has an extremely good rate of broadband uptake, we should be getting much better prices by now.

Last month I got a brochure from Rogers stating that they were putting a cap on the cable Internet services they offer (I'm on the upper-midrange plan) ostensibly "to offer better quality services". Yeah, bullshit.

There's still Primus: my parents pay $69 for local telephone + long distance + DSL that's plenty quick with no cap.

Wardriving and Warhacking will become more frequent..