Cable Forum - View Single Post - Caps-the logic

ian@huth · 11-10-2005, 11:40

The name of the game for most ISP's is attracting new customers for their products and then retaining them. They have to make it appear that they offer the fastest, least restricted service at the lowest price. Many ISP's are making little, if any, profit from their customers in order to boost their customer base.

The higher that broadband speeds become, the more that one customers usage can impact on anothers. Take cable for example where only 4 customers hammering a 10 Mbps connection can seriously affect all other users on that part of the network. Caps in themselves do not remove the impact of this. If those 4 customers all decided to only use their 30 Gb allowance, but all at the same time and maxing out their connection, then other customers will be affected. What caps will do is either make those customers who require more bandwidth than their cap allows move to an alternative ISP who has a product more suitable for their needs of their own volition or restrict the customers usage by other means. Other means can be reducing their maximum speed, traffic shaping their use or terminating their contract, amongst other things.

All ISP's have an infrastructure which has physical limits which can only be exceeded by spending vast amounts of money on upgrading it. There is no such thing as a totally unlimited high speed broadband connection that is long term sustainable at the price that most users find acceptable unless customers are prepared to put up with the degredation to their speed that contention brings.

11-10-2005, 11:40	#6
ian@huth Inactive Join Date: Jun 2003 Location: Huthwaite, Nottinghamshire Services: VM 10Mb, TU, 1xSky HD, 2xSky+ (HD,all packs, sports & movies) 2xDVD PVR's, Freesat Freeview & other Posts: 4,536	Re: Caps-the logic The name of the game for most ISP's is attracting new customers for their products and then retaining them. They have to make it appear that they offer the fastest, least restricted service at the lowest price. Many ISP's are making little, if any, profit from their customers in order to boost their customer base. The higher that broadband speeds become, the more that one customers usage can impact on anothers. Take cable for example where only 4 customers hammering a 10 Mbps connection can seriously affect all other users on that part of the network. Caps in themselves do not remove the impact of this. If those 4 customers all decided to only use their 30 Gb allowance, but all at the same time and maxing out their connection, then other customers will be affected. What caps will do is either make those customers who require more bandwidth than their cap allows move to an alternative ISP who has a product more suitable for their needs of their own volition or restrict the customers usage by other means. Other means can be reducing their maximum speed, traffic shaping their use or terminating their contract, amongst other things. All ISP's have an infrastructure which has physical limits which can only be exceeded by spending vast amounts of money on upgrading it. There is no such thing as a totally unlimited high speed broadband connection that is long term sustainable at the price that most users find acceptable unless customers are prepared to put up with the degredation to their speed that contention brings.