Data caps.
ISPs claim these are enforced to prevent their networks from getting overloaded. But they actually do nothing to prevent network overloading at all.
The reason is that invariably networks get over-utilized at peak times. Even if everyone has a 50GB data cap, if people decide they all want to watch Netflix at 7PM, then the network is overloaded even if not one single person goes over their cap ever. You’d have to make the caps pretty damn small to make this not the case (probably 2GB or less with as oversubscribed as the ISPs have allowed their networks to get), to encourage people just not to use their connections at all.
Bandwidth is fundamentally different than water, or even electric service. The ISPs want to compare it to these things, but it’s nothing like either of them. You can’t save a bucket of bandwidth and use it later. And there is no “bandwidth plant” producing bandwidth as there is with electricity.
These analogies are designed to make you believe there is a shortage of capacity, when in reality there is an abundance and it is getting cheaper all the time.
But don’t believe me (even though I have 15 years of first-hand experience with it), look at the numbers themselves.
TWC’s revenues from Internet access have soared in the last few years, surging from $2.7 billion in 2006 to $4.5 billion in 2009. Customer numbers have grown, too, from 7.6 million in 2007 to 8.9 million in 2009.
But this growth doesn’t translate into higher bandwidth costs for the company; in fact, bandwidth costs have dropped. TWC spent $164 million on data contracts in 2007, but only $132 million in 2009.
And that’s from 2010. Bandwidth costs since then have done nothing but drop by about the same percentage amount.
Bandwidth caps are designed for two purposes.
The first is just to rake in more money for the ISP however possible.
The second is to eliminate competition by creating “bandwidth anxiety” by people worrying that they might go over and thus not watching or downloading something, and instead nudging them to decide to watch it on the cable provider’s un-capped network.
Bandwidth caps do not help with network capacity. No matter what the ISPs claim or tell you, they just don’t. And bandwidth is not like water or electricity. Nothing at all like them in any meaningful way. Allowing those analogies to dominate the conversation allows the ISPs to win.
Which they will anyway, but I guess I am all about fighting the long defeat.