Quite the discussion has come about from BendBroadband’s annoucement that they’re going to start capping bandwidth on residential plans (no word on their plans for their business plans, which really should have been released concurrently). The entry has 59 comments (and counting), and the news has now hit the stupidly-popular Gizmodo: The Future Of Broadband: We’re Totally Screwed.
Commenters there say that they’ve got it worse (I haven’t had a chance to read through all the comments there), but really, you could say that with anything — life is always worse somewhere.
BendBroadband is getting less-than-terrific press about this, and maybe that will cause them to change their mind — or at least open it.
I say we all have a little informal contest: Who has the highest usage graph during a single billing period? How high has anybody gotten? (Update: Let’s not try to kill BendBroadband here. I wasn’t trying to encourage people to download as much as they possibly could just for the sake of downloading. Besides, it’d probably be hard to beat this guy.)
Thanks Mark for the tip.
Update on 4/10: That Gizmodo post is now on (at least) 14 other sites (and I just got word about this site as well.
Update again…: Now it’s on the front page of Digg… . Feel free to digg my original article (there’s a digg link right below the date/time stamp) so that folks can hear the local discussion about this and not just Gizmodo and Digg’s take.
Here’s a button that will digg the original post and the 60+ comments on this site:
Comments
110.9 GB and counting!!!
What’s weird is when I checked the usage graph last week, I had one billing period over 40GB, the other around 20 and this last one was at 12. Now I’m only up to 13 on the last one, despite pushing 3GB last night alone.
Does the thing actually work?
You know, when we get our phone bills, we see exactly how and when our minutes were spent. Should we expect to see similar information on our broadband bills?
The Gizmodo article made top 10 on Digg also.
Yo, this is Justin who contacted Gizmodo. You can find my original post in craigslist as well. In any case, I’m trying to organize a movement ot fix this issue. You can find the details at http://fixbbb.com
Thanks
BendBroadband is Giving You More Speed…
…but at the price of bandwidth caps. It appears that starting in July, BendBroadband Internet customers are going to be saddled with bandwidth caps. For most people, not a big…
BendBroadband just posted a new plan 100GB cap for 64.95/74.95 but with only 8Mbps down.
Wouldn’t it be cheaper to get DSL 7mbit service with no cap than to pay 64.95/74.95 for 8mbit service? I would only get platinum if it was 16mbit, static IP, and 100gb. Even then, some of us rely on having no cap from time to time for legit reasons.
Even then, static IP is nearly useless… when’s the last time the DHCP server gave you a new IP? I’ve had mine for as long as I’ve been living in my new place, over a year.
They still don’t get it.
So, I’m going to hold a public protest on Saturday, May 31st. You can find the details on my website at http://fixbbb.com – I wanted to have enough time to rally up as much support as possible. This should be great.
oh and sticking a MAC address in a table somewhere is worth $11/month too lol…
I wish I could charge a bunch of people 11/month for something as easy as that.
On A Lighter Note…
With all the hullabaloo about the BendBroadband mess, some times we all just need to take a deep breath and have a laugh. And web design and SEO geeks will…
114.9 GB so far this billing period! Is there a Diamond tier in the works?
http://www.savetheinternet.com/=faq
Hey guys, I had just happened to start tracking my own bandwidth for about 2 months before this came along, so I had some solid numbers before their usage thing came online http://lez.ath.cx/?moar with my current service, promoted to silver my adjusted bill for feb would be 689.27$ I tried a week-ish period where I was downright frugal with the bandwidth I used, and had a good-try at it, and I still averaged 4 gigs a day. Basically you cant watch youtube, google video, or stream audio for any length of time, at all
Also this new platinum “thing” is a joke, it would be acceptable with no cap, or even if they had an unlisted service available which was the basic 4/1.5, no cap which we have now, at any price would be great. BendCable used to be the smartest & most astute provider I knew of, modest speeds but they didn’t oversell or have any bulls–t like comcast and a lot of other regionals.
After about 2 weeks of fuming over my options, I came to realize later that with the waiver they got from the fcc in 2007 for the seperable-security mandate for set top boxes put them in a hard spot in 2009. They promised a completely new run-out on digital service for the privilege, except they have barely had the capital to invest in it, and they are doing what they have to (poppin 100-600$ bills on grandmas and unsuspecting fellows with open wifi) to catch up, I dont’ believe they’re being malicious anymore, but it’s still sad, it’s an end of an era.
I did find a hopeful provider in the process, though, http://www.communitybroadband.com/residential.htm I haven’t contacted them regarding actually hooking it up where I am, but 3/3 sounds _nice_
We should start up a group on facebook & get something going with that FixBBB guy :]
This is a friend’s graph: 1 man, 1 woman, 1 teen, and one toddler:
http://omploader.org/vZ2Fl
I’d hate to see their bill after this capping takes effect….
My usage is stuck at 115.7 GB! It’s been stuck there for a few days now. I know I’ve downloaded/uploaded more than a gig in the last 48 hours.
Anybody else having this problem?
BendBroadband Bandwidth Cap Update
If you haven’t been following the drama and the outcry surrounding BendBroadband’s latest pricing changes, let me sum up what’s been going on the last few weeks:BendBroadband announced they were…