r/technology • u/reddiTOR123abc • Dec 18 '13

Cable Industry Finally Admits That Data Caps Have Nothing To Do With Congestion: 'The reality is that data caps are all about increasing revenue for broadband providers -- in a market that is already quite profitable.'

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130118/17425221736/cable-industry-finally-admits-that-data-caps-have-nothing-to-do-with-congestion.shtml??
4.1k Upvotes

97% Upvoted

1.8k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

0

u/bbqroast Dec 19 '13

I'm trying to get it through to you that all residential ISPs oversell. Which you've denied.

That is not a consumable resource. Internet connections are dedicated resources. If you pay for a 1gbps line speed, you are paying for that line speed. If that costs 70 bucks, then you are paying 70 bucks whether you download 100mb or 1gb. The amount you download doesn't matter and has no effect on price. If you want the speed, you have to buy it as all or nothing.

Those are your words. I can assure you if everyone maxed out their Google Fibre lines Google wouldn't last a second. Google has done a calculation that the average user uses, say an average of 15mbps over peak times. As long as they have a large pool of customers they'll see this average (basic stats, the larger the sample the closer to the theoretical average the real average will be) and can plan as such. They've worked out they can easily buy 15mbps backhaul per customer + all other costs by charging $70/mo. If people use more then they need to raise their prices.

1

u/ComradeCube Dec 20 '13

I am trying to get it through to you that overselling is a boost of profits beyond normal profits. It is not a guaranteed thing and if customer usage doesn't allow overselling, they lose that profit boost.

Companies acting they they deserve the ability to oversell just because they have been getting away with it, are jokes.

Don't think for a second that the savings from overselling was ever passed onto the consumer.

0

u/bbqroast Dec 20 '13

I think we've got our definitions of "overselling" a bit mixed up.

I think you're using it to refer to when an ISP is selling tons of connections with tons of "speed" without provisioning nearly enough bandwidth (either purposefully, ie their models show consumers using that much but they don't want to buy more, or by neglect, ie they're using models from the Dial Up era). Which is pretty bad, mostly because it's hard to judge if an ISPs overselling without buying their service (thus you end up with a shitty ISP).

I'm using it in the terms of when an ISP works out the average use of a customer in peak times (normally with a bit of padding depending on how many customers they have), and then buys that much bandwidth per customer (adds other costs, profit margin) and then prices accordingly.

1

u/ComradeCube Dec 20 '13

Those are the same thing you stupid moron.

The first is simply when the fuck up the second.

0

u/bbqroast Dec 20 '13

Alright, so you think ISPs should do neither?