Limits on internet data usage?

[evangaline]

Weird question:

I live in the Nethelands and I have 25 mb/s download speed on an average day, and I get an unlimited amount of data. Unlimited (non-mobile) data has always been a thing for me and all the dutch people I have ever known.

My experience over the last two years has been confusing:
I have gone on vacations to belguim, italy, germany, malta and some place I cannot remember the name of. We usually stay in appartments. The weirdt thing is as follows: altough the internet is considerably slower, the amount of data you can use is limited.
I understand the digital infrastructure is less developed than in my homecountry. The thing I do not understand is adding a limit on data usage.

Does anyone know why they limit the amount of data you can use, and if it is common?

[Friv]

As I understand the theory, and someone may be along shortly with more knowledge, it's not "although", it's "because".

There is a maximum amount of data that infrastructure can transmit at any given time. Overloading the services causes everything to slow down. But it would be really complicated to tell people "you can get internet now, but not when it's busy", so to keep the service from overloading on a day-to-day basis, caps are put in for how much internet you're allowed to use over a month, and you pay through the nose if you go over. Then, again in theory, the money that you're paying in overage fees goes into better infrastructure for the future.

In practice, of course, it mostly becomes an excuse to take money from people and not give any better service, but I'm pretty sure that the above i s the theory.

[Random Sanity]

In practice, of course, it mostly becomes an excuse to take money from people and not give any better service,

When it comes down to it, this is it right here. Canadian telecoms are notorious for price-gouging, when they deign to offer service in an area at all. It's not uncommon to be shelling out 3-figure monthly fees and still be facing data limits/speed restrictions. They have a long list of excuses, most of which crumble under even token analysis, but it all comes down to money-grubbing. Broadband internet (as in obsolete cable connections, not even what would have been considered "high speed" at the time) was supposed to be a universal thing in my province years ago, and they're still not even trying to follow through.

With the money telecoms extort for the most basic of services, they could extend fibre-op to the entire Canadian mainland if they felt like doing so. But it's more profitable to cry poor while ratcheting fees up bit by bit and making it ridiculously easy to accidentally incur extra charges you don't know about until you get a giant bill.

[Alent]

US Comcast Customer here. Pretty high speed, but soft-capped at 1TB/mo. I've hit it several times now since my family has 4+ computers and cloud backup software on all of them and a computer repair business in the house as icing on the cake. We had no limit for a long time, the limit went into place to test the FCC's resolve after the Title 2 decision and we've been stuck with it since.

Friv is right. Rationing is something you do to make current communications infrastructure- any kind of infrastructure, really- work for more people, often times because the infrastructure isn't going to be upgraded for a decade and they have to make it work with what they've got. Wireless is more vulnerable to this than wires are- pretty much anyone on 4G LTE internet has a cap on data for this very reason. Even unlimited mobile data plans are softcapped with a performance degrading filter that drops your connection speed incrementally as you pass thresholds.

With the money telecoms extort for the most basic of services, they could extend fibre-op to the entire Canadian mainland if they felt like doing so. But it's more profitable to cry poor while ratcheting fees up bit by bit and making it ridiculously easy to accidentally incur extra charges you don't know about until you get a giant bill.

This is mostly true, but a more complicated and pathetic issue lies at the heart of it.

At least in the US, the real "customers" are the city/county governments themselves, not the citizens who actually subscribe. The details of what level of service will be provided are laid out in the contract negotiated between city and ISP, and only updated if convenient for the ISP or required by contract, and these contracts tend to be exclusive, long term contracts for years or even decades. (These are real contracts and not "terms subject to change without notice" sham contracts like the rest of us have to settle for.) The people negotiating these contracts tend to not be technology people, so it shouldn't be a surprise that they often cheat themselves out of service improvements simply by being ignorant customers.

The more technophobic/tech illiterate/negotiation disadvantaged your city officials are, the more likely you are to have bad internet with a 25 year contract that lacks provisions for mandatory service improvements and consumer protections against typical cable company abuses. Typically these agreements have outrageous cancellation/renegotiation fees attached, so when more knowing people come in they find themselves trapped by their predecessor's mistakes since they can't just write a check for millions of dollars from the city's coffers just to start negotiations for better internet.

Source: I do IT work for a contract lawyer that specializes in negotiating these agreements on the city/county/etc. side of the table.

[Knaight]

At least in the US, the real "customers" are the city/county governments themselves, not the citizens who actually subscribe. The details of what level of service will be provided are laid out in the contract negotiated between city and ISP, and only updated if convenient for the ISP or required by contract, and these contracts tend to be exclusive, long term contracts for years or even decades. (These are real contracts and not "terms subject to change without notice" sham contracts like the rest of us have to settle for.) The people negotiating these contracts tend to not be technology people, so it shouldn't be a surprise that they often cheat themselves out of service improvements simply by being ignorant customers.

This is particularly true in rural areas - there's often less expertise to pull from in terms of negotiation, and infrastructure is just more expensive when population density is lower*. Rural internet then tends to be pretty bad, which is then exacerbated by people designing webpages and internet using software for the 80% of the population living in the cities with better internet.

*Which isn't to say that good infrastructure couldn't be done, rural electrification happened and was much harder to pull off than an internet access equivalent.

[GilbertRobbins]

Anybody here who know to check the speed of our Internet?

[factotum]

Anybody here who know to check the speed of our Internet?

There are a number of websites that will do this...I use www.speedtest.net, but there are others.

[shawnhcorey]

This talk about "rationing" is nonsense. What they really mean is businesses will pay more than you, so they need to create an excuse to charge them more. The infrastructure can handle anything DSL can throw at them.

I live in a small town in Canada and the ISP I use has only one plan: on. That is, unlimited data at full speed. Unfortunately, the switch can only handle 6Mbps, to HD videos are sometimes limited.

[Misereor]

Does anyone know why they limit the amount of data you can use, and if it is common?

Very common.
ISPs tried to introduce it here in Denmark, but the only ones who would buy it were home owner associations who didn't know any better. (And many of those have changed back to flat rate since.)
Still normal to pay for data usage on your phone though. Don't what that's like in other countries.

[GloatingSwine]

Does anyone know why they limit the amount of data you can use, and if it is common?

Usually they limit your data usage so they don't have to spend money upgrading their infrastructure.

Here in the UK data limits for home broadband are basically dead, but it's still common for mobile internet (there are unlimited mobile data contracts though).


I'm aware it's still a thing in the US, but the US' broadband infrastructure is backwards and will remain backwards for the forseeable future because almost all markets have a de facto monopoly provider. Without competition, incentive to improve service won't exist. (basically the FCC would have to force local loop unbundling on comcast and the like, allowing other providers to use their physical infrastructure).

[kyoryu]

This talk about "rationing" is nonsense. What they really mean is businesses will pay more than you, so they need to create an excuse to charge them more. The infrastructure can handle anything DSL can throw at them.

I live in a small town in Canada and the ISP I use has only one plan: on. That is, unlimited data at full speed. Unfortunately, the switch can only handle 6Mbps, to HD videos are sometimes limited.

It can be. But it's not necessarily.

When you buy business-class bandwidth, the assumption is that you'll be using it all the time at full bore, or at least that you can. The price that is set is generally based on the price that *that* ISP buys the bandwidth, plus maintenance for the downstream ISP's gear/staff, plus some profit.

The price for consumer-level bandwidth is a fraction of that, because the assumption is that consumers do *not* use their bandwidth 100%, 100% of the time. That's why companies can sell it so much cheaper, because they assume that only a fraction is being used per consumer at any time.

So, really businesses pay for a different class of bandwidth entirely - something they can run full-bore, 24/7, not something that is presumed to run at partial capacity in relative bursts (individual downloads), or using a fraction of the stream for long periods (streaming).

[shawnhcorey]

It can be. But it's not necessarily.

When you buy business-class bandwidth, the assumption is that you'll be using it all the time at full bore, or at least that you can. The price that is set is generally based on the price that *that* ISP buys the bandwidth, plus maintenance for the downstream ISP's gear/staff, plus some profit.

The price for consumer-level bandwidth is a fraction of that, because the assumption is that consumers do *not* use their bandwidth 100%, 100% of the time. That's why companies can sell it so much cheaper, because they assume that only a fraction is being used per consumer at any time.

So, really businesses pay for a different class of bandwidth entirely - something they can run full-bore, 24/7, not something that is presumed to run at partial capacity in relative bursts (individual downloads), or using a fraction of the stream for long periods (streaming).

Bandwidth is a fairy tale. That's not how switches work. The are designed so that their average output bandwidth matches their average input bandwidth with some margin for high loads. In other words, you can run at maximum bandwidth all the time. Bandwidth limitations is a marketing ploy.

[factotum]

Bandwidth is a fairy tale. That's not how switches work. The are designed so that their average output bandwidth matches their average input bandwidth with some margin for high loads. In other words, you can run at maximum bandwidth all the time. Bandwidth limitations is a marketing ploy.

Um, clearly limitations aren't a ploy, because switches don't have infinite bandwidth and there aren't an infinite number of switches--so the total amount of bandwidth available has an upper limit. You can actually see this is action where my mother lives--it's a large village (1400 people), and the available bandwidth of her internet connection tanks at times of the day when lots of people are using it (e.g. 5-7pm on weekdays, when kids are home from school and adults home from work). It isn't being artificially throttled, it's just slowing down to accommodate all the data being routed through the exchange at those times.

[Mando Knight]

Another factor is simply the size of the infrastructure: the Netherlands are geographically quite small compared to some of the other nations. Germany is about 8.6 times bigger by surface area, and the US has over 25 times the land area of Germany. Combined with their larger but less dense populations, this means that maintaining high-quality connections is neither simple nor cheap. To accommodate for the increased cost of even just maintaining older infrastructure, companies have to increase prices somewhere, and the most logical way of doing so is to make the people who use their services the most pay more for the extra service.

[shawnhcorey]

Another factor is simply the size of the infrastructure: the Netherlands are geographically quite small compared to some of the other nations. Germany is about 8.6 times bigger by surface area, and the US has over 25 times the land area of Germany. Combined with their larger but less dense populations, this means that maintaining high-quality connections is neither simple nor cheap. To accommodate for the increased cost of even just maintaining older infrastructure, companies have to increase prices somewhere, and the most logical way of doing so is to make the people who use their services the most pay more for the extra service.

Except that the telcos do not maintain the same level of connections in rural areas as in suburban ones. And the equipment is often very older, like 20 years older.

[Mando Knight]

Except that the telcos do not maintain the same level of connections in rural areas as in suburban ones. And the equipment is often very older, like 20 years older.

Because again, population density is lower. Running better telecom equipment to farmland with maybe 10-20 people per square mile is extremely expensive per customer compared to even the small town a few miles over, where there's fifty times as many people. The older equipment often has its own costs that are non-negligible (i.e. requiring more or more powerful signal repeaters, which scale based on distance as well), but the up-front cost of the new equipment is generally high enough that the upgrade isn't projected to break even until it's the old equipment that everyone's complaining about, so any upgrading is done as the company sees it's needed, not as some kind of Field of Dreams scenario where they hope that high-reliability high-speed internet combined with the rural landscape will pull in thousands of new customers to the area away from the city.