Re:Netflix’s biggest bingers get hit with higher internet costs
by paranoidrobot on Wednesday August 14, 2019 @09:17AM
(#20695172)
They help demand management because if they're set low enough, people can't use the highway 5 times a day, they have to limit their usage to just once a day, or maybe a few times a week.
In Australia the bandwidth caps used to be specifically set up with a different peak and off-peak cap to help with this even more.
Re:Netflix’s biggest bingers get hit with higher internet costs
by ubercow13 on Wednesday August 14, 2019 @09:16AM
(#20695161)
Any evidence that it doesn’t work?
In the UK most ISPs will instead perform traffic shaping where they will slow down your connection during peak times after a certain small amount of data transfer. This still seems to be disliked by consumers just the same.
Re:Netflix’s biggest bingers get hit with higher internet costs
by cannonedhamster on Wednesday August 14, 2019 @10:37AM
(#20695973)
Yes. Everyone still needs to go to work at the same time so the resources are still going to be used at the same time. It's charging extra for standard expected usage that the ISPs have known exists for years. If this were really an issue there wouldn't be so much dark fiber in the US hooked into copper cable local loops.
Re:Netflix’s biggest bingers get hit with higher internet costs
by mattnewton on Wednesday August 14, 2019 @09:21AM
(#20695206)
If we had a competitive market in either place, it would be interesting to see what consumers choose. I think I would prefer the traffic shaped example, since the current tiering situation appears to have _both_ limits in the fine print with Comcast.
How do data caps help with that though? People are still going to use most of their internet during peek hours, because...well, those are the times people use the internet the most, by definition.
It's like trying to combat rush hour traffic problems by limiting the number of times people can use a highway. People are still going to use it during rush hour, they just are going to avoid using the highway during non-rush hour periods, which accomplishes nothing.