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.

Kakkoister

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.

Repton

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.

Kakkoister

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.

Step666

@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.

pashdown

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

Fatty1

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

archercc

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).

The Hoff

@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.

The Hoff

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

iiviip3

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

lpranal

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

matt buchanan

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.

D4RK_53K70R

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.

x23

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.

ouphie

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]

Joseph

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.

lpranal

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.

Kanti_V2

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.

cygnusx8

@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*

cloudnine

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

cloudnine

@pashdown:

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

Gordon_Shumway

@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?

sisedi

@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?).

DustyButt

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]

pashdown

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

PhysicsMan

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

Gordon_Shumway

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

[gizmodo.com]

Hiphopopotamus

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.

ninjagin

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

illegalprelude

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

frigg

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.

MagnoliaBoy

@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...

nutbastard

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.

Dunny0

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.

CruJones

"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.

webwbr

There goes moving to Canada.

radikaled

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

mth2574

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.

Heavybell

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.

Glamdering

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.

Kakkoister

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.

Kevin1a

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.

halfshafter

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

Glamdering

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.

ggvrsn

@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).

Kanti_V2

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.

sgrmba

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.

MadLinx

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!

MadLinx

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)

surf.seppo

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

BigViper

@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.

Topcat

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.

mariospants

@Kanti_V2:

Bull. First, MOST industries would not even EXIST if not for private enterprise. Government creats nothing except burocracy. Second, when you talk about nationalising an industry, don't forget that what you really mean is STEALING ownership from the companies that own them now. And who owns those companies? "Them?" "Soulless Corporations?" NO. PEople own companies; people like you and me. I'm no fat cat, but I have a 401k, some mutuals, a small stock portfolio. I know I've got some ISP shares somewhere in all that. So you are talking about STEALING from ME! Screw you, you pinko thief! :-)

Candyman

Wardriving and Warhacking will become more frequent..

Evermore707

Measly 50gb? My gf in alaska signed up with MTA, the only dsl she could find in her area, and for $26 she gets 10gb a month with (sit down) $15/gb overage. Thats an insult. We monitered her usage today. 100mb just of WoW, Second Life and webbrowsing, with an additional 20mb or so for a MSN voice chat. Now that she's noticed this cap (after an outrageous bill) she's scared to do so much as look at LOLcats.

Devo-Chu

Man... there's always somebody who's got it worse. When I still lived in South Africa we were being charged the equivilent of $82 a month for 2gb ... that's right... you read correctly the first time... two... 2... TWO!!!!! The monopoly is so bad there you take what you can get.

sonburn

Hah. You guys *always* complain.

For srsly.

Here in the UK we're charged the equivalent of $60 a month for an 8mbps downstream with a 15gb limit. My parent's former much more expensive plan of $120 per month bought us 50gb for a similar line, but you have it a lot easier over there, that's for sure.

legacye

@cloudnine:
"Fuck the FCC!"
-fixed

RIAA has nothing to do with this one.

mricyfire

Ugh. I hate consumption based billing -- apparently I use three times the amount most people use in a year each month. At least according to my ISPs figures. They just decided to switch to consumption billing starting in June. Needless to say I'm switching providers. I don't need an extra 150+ added on to each bill.

Sven.T.Sexgore

@legacye:

Well thats ok, we do have it pretty crap, tho for £21 (bout $40) i get a peak/off peak usage policy

peak = 20gb usage (between 4.00pm and 12.00am)
off peak = Truly Unlimited, there was a fair usage policy of 50gb, but they lifted that, so basically, they only get unhappy if you seem to be using it for commercial use. (like 500gb or summit crazy)

So i just do all my downloadng during the day!

Jakus

@legacye: Wow, seriously you should consider changing ISPs, I get upto 16mb with unlimited usage (they do have a fair usage policy though) for £10 ($20 USD) with my Sky package. With the basic sky channels and braodband it's about £26 ($50 USD) a month.

Sockpuppet

Add another Alaskan who has had to deal with outrageous (5-15GB) caps over the years on DSL and cable. At least most service plans in the last few years are "unlimited" (or have an option as such), but the day they reinstate a bandwidth cap is the day I move out. A cap was annoying back when game demos were a hundred megs or so, but with streaming video, direct download services such as Steam and increasingly media-saturated websites like Youtube or the former Stage6 (R.I.P.)... you can hit a cap in less than a day. Ridiculous.

Slash3

fuck this. what is it 1995 again? I pay for broadband, i don't pay for dialup. For as much as I pay for ComCrapTastic service, they better not screw with me, and implement this crap or im going back to satelite.

skilled1

You're not screwed - usage-based charging may turn out to be the least worst option in the long term.

ISP pricing models were traditionally based on the stat-mux effect where you assumed that most of the people were quiet were most of the time. This meant that the ISP could offer (say) an 8mps service for a *tiny* fraction of the real *cost* of provisioning 8mps 24x7. The customer benefited from cheap broadband, the provider sold more connections and everyone was happy.

However usage patterns on the Internet are changing. More and more people are running torrents 24x7, more streaming services, video chats etc all diminishing the stat mux benefit. Given Internet access provision is a lousy business to be in anyway, it's hardly surprising providers are starting to look at new pricing models. What choices have they got:

* move all the prices upwards to reflect the diminishing benefits of stat-muxing ? Problem with this is it risks pricing out the market occasional internet users, leaving you with the hard-core always-on users, so further diminishing the benefits of stat-muxing and so leading to further price rises. Vicious circle;

* Keep the existing model, but enforce "fair-use" provision so that you can either cap or kick-off particularly abusive users of the network. This can work if done with some sensitivity, but usually isn't; too often it just comes across as an arbitrary and capricious act by the ISP;

* Stuff in some magic box to moderate/block traffic the ISP considers abusive. Bar the vendor of said magic boxes, we all hate this approach :-) ;

* Have a basic, low-cost cap for the entry level users, plus unlimited pay as you go above that. No fair-use restraints, no protocol filters, just pay for what you eat. Seems to me this may well be the least worst approach ...

khoadley

Quebec, Canada here
Videotron
Download speed of 10 Mbps and upload speed of 900 Kbps
Combined 100gb up/down limit, overage $1.50/gb
$65/mo less $10/mo because I have Cable with them too.

It used to be unlimited, but in October they changed it to 100gb up/down combined "to better service us" Honestly it hasn't been a problem, I download dozens of mov... err "linux distros" a month and haven't gone over once.

The strange thing is there's an even faster level of service for more $$ but the combined cap is only 20gb/mo

I generally just throttle my torrent uploads a bit, no problems yet.

Confuzius

@MagnoliaBoy: I would have commented on this article, but I took MagnoliaBoy's advice and stopped doing business with the only broadband provider in my area. Now I no longer have internet access. This message you are reading does not really exist.

backbroken

thats actually about the same as mine. $50 a month for 40GB bandwidth at 20Mbps. i can get another 10GB for $10. have no idea what the overage costs are but i once had a $200 bill when i let some bit torrenting get out of hand. this has been the norm in lawrence, ks for a few years from the only provider in the area.

Angus

Teh suck.

Especially considering all those fancy back bones of our intertubes were paid by the US taxpayer. And all further upgrades to the system are paid for by tax breaks (on the back of the US taxpayer) to said telcos and all fees charged to us by telcos and cable since the mid-70's...

It's unfortunate that all those fun things that the broadband suppliers say we can do with their connections cost more when we actually use them.

radio1

If this 16 Mbps connection is ADSL, or ADSL2+ (as it is called here in Europe) don't be fooled. I have a theoretical 24 Mbps since 2006 here and my MODEM never connected beyond 6 Mps.

ADSL is crap. Speed decreases with distance. I am about 2,5 Km distant from ISP. That's considered far enough. So, the "amazing" 24 Mbps speed arrives at 5,5 to 6 Mbps at my home. Beside that, ever ISP imposes a contention rate on the central, what means that you have to share your speed with several other people in your area. That reduces in 20% the speed that is already Low. So, 6 Mbps is reduced in 20% and falls to 4,8 Mbps.

Beyond all that, all ISP measure the speed between your home and their central. The point is that their jammed networks will never deliver the same speed to the outside world, i.e., the web. So, my connection that after all reductions was in 4.8 Mbps is reduced even more. In a nutshell: I NEVER HAD SPEEDS BEYOND 3 Mbps... and remember, I have a 24 Mbps link!

You can think my is a particular problem and will not happen to you. If you think so, go ahead and order this 16 Mbps connection. I advice you that you will never have this speed, even in your wildest dreams.... unless you live inside the telephonic central.

octopussy

try living in Ireland or (ISP) broadband speeds, service, sucks.

for an idea of it. look up eircom.net broadband.

williethewisp

Paying per byte makes sense. You pay a fee for a clear limit, and manage your own usage up til that point. When you breach it, you pay for any extra.

At your discretion.

It puts the power in the hands of the user, rather than the ISP. It's far, far preferable to paying for an 'unlimited' service, that has limits you can't see disguised as 'fair usage'.

toastyghost

Hopefully there will be some competing ISPs that will keep these kinds of plans in check.

Personally, none of these plans really fit my needs. I have multiple subscriptions to downloadable (legal) software, and also pick up quite a few TV series some of which are in HD (well 1.5gb per episode). With all of this, I can easily top 1TB per week. It is my opinion that, HD video and internet software distribution will become more commonplace in the future.

tanukineri

I doubt this will happen here. If it does, it will be reasonable. Or one company won't jump on the bandwagon, and reap the rewards of offering "unlimited."

avconsumer

Wreck... It's spelled wreck. You wreak havoc, but you wreck a train.

Ike_Skelton

The picture is a famous train wreak that occurred in 1895 in the Gare Montparnasse in Paris. That's an express train that forgot to stop! Thanks Wikipedia, you are the font of all knowledge on the Internet! (hint: search for "Train Wreak" :)

SalParadise

You ever notice, it's always the cable companies griping about this?

If they take these half-baked schemes to my area, I'm switching to FiOS. Verizon may have more than two problems, but at least when they say "unlimited", they mean "unlimited".

HeartBurnKid

This is bullshit. Internets are already overpriced. I refuse to pay $45 a month for TimeWarner's broadband service. I'll be OK until all people use encryption on their wifi or stop using 'password' as their passwords.

Ike_Skelton

@avconsumer: Totally agree - but I think also that a consumer push will also deter this from completely over-taking the "norm"_

Piss off enough comsumers - you better watch out!

uberfu

@matt buchanan: Well Matt - there are speed limits on the highway - even though my car will top out at 160mph - doesn't mean that the cop won't pull me over after 70mph_

Ya know_

[sarcasm]
The first few years the car was around there wasn't a speed limit either and then one day.... that "freedom" was taken away_ This is no different_ [/sarcasm]

uberfu

Oops! *wreck* I meant to type, *wreck* D'oh!

Anyway, here's another link as penance, to make up for my poor spelling skilz:
[www.steam-training.com]

SalParadise

i agree with khoardley ... the big invisible elephant in the room is that residential ISP is not modelled for the top few percentage points of residential users.

who pays for this? does the 99% of residential users fund the 1% drinking dom perigon while we all drink water. i don't this so.

- according to the press, 5% of these folks use half the capacity.
- this type of usage is most likely generated by illegal sharing of big multimedia content.

the threat to the future of the Internet are the spammers and kings of illegal multimedia content. if the p2p folks would add some type of watermarking, conditional access, or other type of mark for legitimate traffic we'd have no issues.

but then again, has an addition to smtp protocol for identity happened to allow for easy filtering of spam ... I think not and now 90% of smtp traffic is crap.

so ... now I'll be we start hitting 90% of bandwidth for illegal content.

who foots the bill here? if there becomes no model for residential internet then it will go away.

BendUser

Telus has done worse then just cap they shape downloads so that getting torrents takes forever and they've rendered their newsgroup server useless and all for only $40 a month.

This will just drive us all back to dialup

emp19

This is Justin (the guy getting screwed in Bend)

Anyways, I made a site at [fixbbb.com] for anyone who wants to participate in a public protest, or just vent about how you hate consumption based billing.

I want to take a moment to thank Gizmodo for posting this article. i believe it's going to help us out a lot!

FixBBB

I run a local blog where BendBroadband is an advertiser, and I posted a rant about this and the communit, as well as BendBroadband, has had quite the discussion:

[utterlyboring.com]

I'm over the 50GB/month on a fairly regular basis.

orty

HeartBurnKid ...

FiOS will be no different IMHO ... it is just a matter of time. FiOS uses a shared bus just like cable.

Sooner or later the illicit P2P minority will drive this up where action is also required.

It's about time we understand that we are subsidizing illegal multimedia content.

Everyone wants something for nothing. Get ahold of P2P or be willing to pay $$$ for the right of the minority to pull ripped multimedia content.

We decided to put up with UCE ... well now it is 90% of our SMTP content.

BendUser

You can follow up on these events at FixBBB.com I want to thank Gizmod for helping us make this more public.

Justin

FixBBB

You can go to FixBBB.com to follow up on these events. I want to thank Gizmodo for helping us make this public.

Justin

FixBBB

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.

rossgl

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.

rjupiter

BendUser

LOL I've had that painting hanging up on my wall since I was 6.

Mr_LaZy

North of Toronto, Canada. Got that same brochure as mariospants from Rogers. I use on average ~120GB / month at 8Mbps with their highest cap @ 100GB for $100 and 2$ or so per GB over. Went to Teksavvy, 5Mbps down 800kbps up for 29.95 + 9 dollar dry dsl band rate. 200GB cap with $0.25 / GB over. No comparison. Cancelled Rogers and went with Teksavvy. Rogers can go DIAF.

redgreen21