Help Index – Rogers Yahoo! — Interesting, no?
In an effort to keep pace with the evolving Internet needs of our Rogers Yahoo! Hi-Speed Internet customers and to continue providing you with a fast and efficient service, we have implemented a combined upload and download bandwidth limit of 61,440 Megabytes (60 gigabytes) per month. This is a very generous limit which is approximately equal to the consumption of a typical customer in an entire year. This limit was announced on February 15 2005 and will take effect starting March 17, 2005.
(This story has been posted twice.)
I hope this trend towards big bandwidth for the home continues! How much does it cost in the US? Here in Portugal there’s a company promoting 50 gigs ADSL (national or international traffic) for 55,90 euros a month (http://adsl.clix.pt/produtos8mg.html, portuguese only).
Currently the norm here is to have a 1 or 2 gigabyte limit on international traffic and around 20 to 30 gigs national traffic (maybe to keep the portuguese population… well, portuguese… We’re nationalistic, but not as the french 😛 …).
If you go over that limit you pay extra. I’m paying 35 euros/month for 1gig international, 20 gigs national, 512 kbps cable (Netcabo, which belongs to the state owned Telepac/Portugal Telecom). This other particular company is making no distinctions, which is why I’ll be changing soon from my current cable ISP.
How does it look in other countries?
Ah, and unlike Rogers, I can host a server!
It is interesting. I’ve been reading the indignation of Roger’s subscribers, who routinely go over this limit. They must be downloading/uploading DVD’s nonstop. Someone pointed out if 3% of your subscriber base is accounting for 90% of your total bandwidth, if you forced them to quite and become customers of your competition, “fat city.” I also have read that Roger’s is about to start there own VOIP service and this may be there way of guaranteeing quality of service without spending more money on infrastructure.
Hey John,
Instead of policing Rogers Yahoo! Hi-Speed Internet customers with an across-the-board 60 Gb limit policy, wouldn’t it make more sense to just charge them by bandwidth once it reaches a certain amount?
That would keep those MP3 and XviD downloading kids from hogging all the bandwidth for free, while allowing business users the option to price plans above a 60 Gig limit.
We ought to be charging for bandwidth anyway; as the multi-media file swapping and resource hogging is getting ridiculous.
Sincerely,
Christopher Lee
http://www.rikter.com
Hmmm…
I wonder if my highspeed internet has a monthly cap. I’m a pretty heavy user, and 2 gigs a day of combined uploads and downloads just isn’t that much.
I’ve never gotten any complaints from my provider and I’m almost positive that I average at least 2 or 3 gigs a day.
Whopping? I’d call it paltry.
Actually Chris as someone who’s been in the industry I’ll take that. The reason they don’t charge for bandwidth is that would require a big overhaul of their billing system as well as a small overhaul of their infrastructure. Like most incumbent wire owners they’d rather piss off a small number of customers than spend money. Also whenever one of the incumbents changes billing they make mistakes… because they won’t spend money on the upgrade. They feel it’s cheaper to give rebates, if you manage to get their attention and many people won’t and it’s a pain to change wire so many people won’t get a rebate or leave either. So from their point of view it’s more cost efficient to send threatening letters to people about bandwidth and piss them off than upgrade. Unlike cablecos some telcos already have billing systems that will do this, mine does, some use it, mine does, but many of the telcos that have the capability don’t enable it… because that would cost money! This is also why they are trying to strangle wireless in it’s crib because it might make changing ISPs easier. Success at telecom isn’t about technology; it’s about hoarding cash so you can buy the weaklings during a downturn. Forget that and you can say hello to synergy!
I’ll stick with my Bell-Sympatico flat-rate bandwidth at 3MBit for $45 CDN per month plan thank you very much.
(I also pay $5 USD per month for 700MB of web hosting space because I get flat-rate bandwidth)
First come the monthly caps, then come the daily caps.
Here in Brazil all companies have limits, but none of the companies enforce them. For instance, my 350 kbps ADSL plan allows me to download 5 GB per month.
Those limits are safeguards for the companies, because according to brazillian law they can’t impose limits on users if those weren’t in contracts. But with the competition here I doubt they’ll ever charge people.
In an effort to keep pace with the evolving Internet needs of my household and to continue providing you with a subscription fee, we have implemented a charge limit of $29.95 per month. This is a very generous limit which is approximately equal to the earnings third world families in an entire year. This limit was announced on February 15 2005 and will take effect starting March 17, 2005. Invoices received after that date will be automatically reduced to the new limit. Thank you for you cooperation.
Rogers shouldn’t get away with this, I’m switching to Bell.
Bell does it too.
What’s Bell’s cap?
This is ridiculous…
“In an effort to keep pace with the evolving Internet needs…”
–> Improve your service, don’t enforce limitations on your customers.
I wonder whether this actually reduces bandwidth. I know that as I get close to the month end I check to see how much bandwidth I have left and consider what I might want and download things just in case I need the bandwidth next month.
I do feel Rogers advertising is deliberately deceptive as outlined on the attached link.