…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 deal. But for bandwidth-heavy geeks like me (and I’m sure I’m not the only one), it is, even if I were on the highest plan.
While I’m sure they’ve always internally had these caps, and I applaud them for actually making them public, they don’t seem very generous and they’re forcing users into more expensive plans to make sure they have breathing room.
The biggest problem for me is my nightly online backups, not only to my house but from my house. I have software that backs up local data nightly to Mozy servers and I also have a 400GB file server in my home office that backs up data from the servers in my Sunriver office on a nightly basis. I also download large torrent files of DVD disk images, software patches, midget porn etc… . I can all but guarantee that I’d hit the bandwidth cap pretty much every month (probably every couple weeks).
But the reality is that most of my heavy bandwidth usage is in the middle of the night (between 10PM and 7AM, after which the connection to my server in Sunriver severs as the office is opening back up), where it’s not going to screw with the bulk majority of folks. So should I be penalized when I’m not going to be affecting 95% of folks?
As it stands right now, their page to check your usage doesn’t work, but let’s hope that’s up long before they roll this thing out.
I know Comcast, a major, national cable provider, has these sorts of caps, but I was hoping a local, home-grown company wouldn’t have to resort to this, especially without an option for an unlimited plan (depending on what source you read, Comcast’s cap is between 90-200gb, which is quite a bit more than BendBroadband’s limit, even on the high end).
While BendBroadband has been a long-time advertiser on this site (my agreement with them allows me to editorialize all I want about their service), and I’ve constantly recommended their Internet services, I might have to shop around for DSL services unless some clarification can be made for hardcore geeks (and long time customers) like me. It’s late, and I’m tired from watching all the basketball today, so maybe this has me more riled up than it should, but in this day and age where bandwidth should be getting cheaper and cheaper (and generally it is), it irks me when my ISP for nearly a decade decides to cap it on me.
Update on 4/4: Some good discussion below in the comments. Here is the spreadsheet that one of the commenters put together to show how this can really cost you.
Update on 4/7: Forgot to post this last week: BendTel doesn’t think putting caps on Internet use is moving people in the right direction for utilizing the Internet. I tend to agree (and I like the folks at BendTel, having used their services in the past at my office).
Update on 4/10: This story has now gone national. Feel free to digg this.