this post was submitted on 30 Aug 2023
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They don't cap data because there is a "finite supply of data" they cap it because there is a finite amount of bandwidth.
That being said though, it should still be banned because it isn't 2005 anymore and the bandwidth we have is absolutely ridiculous.
And the U.S. taxpayers have paid for nationwide broadband several times already.
They aren't rate limiting bandwidth, but monthly utilization and those are uncoupled values. Besides your plan already limits your bandwidth. The data cap is just an added fee.
No, I mean limited bandwidth as in all together, not individually. You can't have unlimited bandwidth because you don't have unlimited resources.
But monthly caps aren't a cap on bandwidth? Bandwidth is a measure of throughput and that's not what monthly caps are. If it were, then when you used up your monthly cap you just couldn't use any more of it because you'd have run out, but that isn't how it works, if you exceed your cap you get charged a fee, that's it. It's just an extra fee for using your internet.
It doesn't make sense in aggregate either, if I used my entire monthly cap in the shortest possible time period and then stopped using internet for the rest of the month, that would be the most stress I could possibly put on the network. And it wouldn't cost me anything extra. But if I use 1.3TB instead of 1.2TB over the entire month there is no appreciable extra stress on the network, but I get charged a fee for it. It's a bullshit fee.
You just said it doesn't make sense as an aggregate, and then went on to describe something that is literally not an aggregate... That's not what an aggregate is
It does make sense as an aggregate. These sorts of limits are used all over the tech industry, it's a form of rate limiting. Doing it on a monthly time scale instead of a daily or hourly one still aggregates very similarly.
Do I agree with it? No, it's bullshit these days, but you are clearly misrepresenting the problem space that's used to justify it.
And why after saying "you will not get more than 100Mbit/s" they say "also you will not get more than 10Gbit/mo"? It is not just a note about theoretical limit, but actual data cap.
Because they can then let you get faster bandwidth, but you don't soak it all up. That's the general idea at least but it doesn't apply to today.
I'm from the Netherlands and remember when we first got internet over the television cable. It was already unlimited use. Well under FUP (fair use policy), meaning that you could get charged when you extremely exceeded the downloaded data average of all other users. I downloaded everything I could get my hand on and never got a charge for it.
Now I have 1gig fiber connection for €60, I would go crazy if I had data caps.
Many of the ISP's in the states used to have unlimited caps. This whole data cap bullshit started 10 years ago or so. These same ISP's will drop the datacap in areas where there is competition. Hate them.
1gig fiber, London, £25/mo
Same, but before it was available in my area I was stuck with "1gig" cable that was really like .75gig because they only guarantee "up to 1gig" and 700mb is not over "1gig" therefor I'm getting what I paid for (Had this actual conversation with a customer service rep when I requested they send a tech to find out why I NEVER get the advertised speeds and my modem was reporting thousands of errors in the data between it and my provider)... and cost me $120/month with a 1TB data cap, or $170/month for unlimited. Now that the DSL provider in my area ran fiber to my neighborhood, I switched to the unlimited 1gig fiber for $70/month with no hidden fees, rate locked for life, and told my old cable provider to go pound sand while sipping wine and rubbing my nipples.
There is also a "finite supply" of clean water and electricity, but during the dawn of the Internet age corporations had more lobbying power than before and were able to stave off real meaningful regulation, now the consumer pays the price. We need to stop giving corporations the same rights as people and revisit the 14th Amendment they stole personhood from, as it wasn't intended for that purpose. Regardless of what Mitt Romney might think, corporations are not people.