Me and Comcast might be parting ways, THE F#CK$!

[itsmydamnation]

Data traffic to Oz and NZ is so expensive because the way they get the data into and out of the country is by homing pigeon. Each pigeon has a small SSD strapped on.

while one would think its international transit that costs, it isn't really. two things that really kill internet in OZ:

1. peering agreements, ISP have to peer with each other, if two ISP have an equal amount of data that each others customers want then they normally peer to each other for free. There is no data that anyone wants in OZ so our ISP's have to pay higher amounts to peer to tier 1 providers.

2. no access mile or DSLAM to POP compitition, for the majority of NZ and OZ there is only 1 provider of local access (generally POTS) and only 1 or two more doing backhaul from exchanges to POP's.

yeah we get raped internet cost wise. im on a "premium" ISP $60 a month for 60gigs but i do get free usenet access via giganews and astraweb.

most people in OZ get sucked into marketing from the big telco's and end up on 24month contracts @ $100 a month for 10gig. "but we save 10% off our total bill they say "

 

[MfA]

There is no data that anyone wants in OZ

Pshaw, everyone wants warez (50% of internet traffic is P2P). Maybe Aussies are all just leeches

 

[itsmydamnation]

the big telco's include both uploading and downlaoding in there tiny quotas. so yes OZ is full of leechers. but it also has to do with scale and OZ ISP's are tiny in the grand scheme of things.

 

[digitalwanderer]

Well we just passed 250GB today sometime a few hours ago, my Rubicon is crossed.

 

[MrGaribaldi]

So are you going to see if you can get to 1TB before they cut you off?

 

[Neb]

I said it before and I'll say it again, keep it legal kids.

 

[digitalwanderer]

So are you going to see if you can get to 1TB before they cut you off?

Nope. Gonna keep using it like I normally use it and see what happens.

 

[MrGaribaldi]

Makes sense I guess. How long does it take to change from one ISP to another?

Nebula, I'd be disinclined to share illegal material after hitting a limit like that, but nothing wrong with helping to seed linux distros.

 

[digitalwanderer]

A day or two apparently, so no biggy.

 

[eastmen]

That's probably why they really are unlimited over here: false advertising is illegal and that's strictly enforced.

That's not to say that they don't try to limit the bandwidth versus expenses in different ways and there is still a lot of fine print, as I posted above.

I was a customer of @home before, and they did auto-increase the bandwidth every year, but their customer service was really the pits.

Then again, the customer service of my current provider turned out to be very friendly and polite, but much worse in the technical department. I have had to have them on the phone for almost 30 hours(!!!) last year when upgrading my subscription.

There's only bad and worse in that respect.

THe main problem is that these companys took billions to improve internet service in the 90s and we are now further behind other countrys than ever before and many of these companys are the only game in town or one of two so they are able to charge what they want and cut off who they want because they know users have limited options.

 

[Bludd]

while one would think its international transit that costs, it isn't really. two things that really kill internet in OZ:

1. peering agreements, ISP have to peer with each other, if two ISP have an equal amount of data that each others customers want then they normally peer to each other for free. There is no data that anyone wants in OZ so our ISP's have to pay higher amounts to peer to tier 1 providers.

2. no access mile or DSLAM to POP compitition, for the majority of NZ and OZ there is only 1 provider of local access (generally POTS) and only 1 or two more doing backhaul from exchanges to POP's.

yeah we get raped internet cost wise. im on a "premium" ISP $60 a month for 60gigs but i do get free usenet access via giganews and astraweb.

most people in OZ get sucked into marketing from the big telco's and end up on 24month contracts @ $100 a month for 10gig. "but we save 10% off our total bill they say "

Thanks for the info.

 

[digitalwanderer]

I'm at 732,534MB so far this month with one day left, if I'm not online for a few days it means they cut me off and I'm switching to AT&T.

 

[Grall]

You have downloaded 733 THOUSAND megabytes of WHAT exactly

I don't even understand how it's possible. That's like, a blu-ray movie a day, every friggin' day for a month...

 

[BRiT]

Ones and Zeros...

 

[digitalwanderer]

You have downloaded 733 THOUSAND megabytes of WHAT exactly

Lots of TV shows. I don't watch 'em on TV anymore, much more convenient to download the 720p versions and watch 'em on my PC.

That can be up to 8-10Gb a day.

 

[WhiningKhan]

That can be up to 8-10Gb a day.

But we were talking 29 days here, not 73...

 

[Simon F]

That can be up to 8-10Gb a day.

OMG. I just switched to a package that allows 10GB* per month! (well it's not metered in off-peak time)


*And that's metric GB not the full-fat binary variety.

 

[Grall]

Metered internet connections is like living in the tech version of the stone age. And 10GB is pathetically low.

I'd rather have a permanently throttled connection at say 8-10mbit/s than anything advertised as faster, and with a cap on it.

Then again, my connection is an unthrottled 24mbit (although physical distance to DSLAM makes actual link speed drop to about 13mbit/s sustained), and no cap... That's the way it's really supposed to be.

 

[Simon F]

Metered internet connections is like living in the tech version of the stone age. And 10GB is pathetically low.

Well, considering the maximum we have ever used in a month is 7GB, it's more than enough for us. I could have paid a bit more to get 60+ GB/month, but what would be the point?

Might I ask what you pay/month for your service?

 

[Malo]

Lots of TV shows. I don't watch 'em on TV anymore, much more convenient to download the 720p versions and watch 'em on my PC.

That can be up to 8-10Gb a day.

You'd rather watch them sitting a couple feet away from a what.... max 30" monitor, as opposed to on the couch in front of a big screen tv? And if you stream them to said tv from your PC... that's the same as using a DVR.

That aside, I still don't think you have any right to call Comcast "THE F#CK$" when all your really doing is downloading hoards of illegal material. The more users like you, the more the rest of us are shafted from ISPs implementing caps, traffic shaping and taking up local bandwidth.