On the note of Caps – I run my Usenet download at an average of 155gig a month so I was 50% over the previous cap but well under this cap so I’m not bothered. And that’s only Usenet. I can see my usage skyrocketing this month and next when the Oscar screeners come out but I doubt I will be anything major – my biggest month ever was only 750gig from Usenet when I was new to Usenet and I was off sick for a month. So the whole question of caps is pretty moot – in MY humble opinion.

So far – happy. Worth it – I think so – but only just.

p.s. PEople I feel sorry for are those that get the service and can’t seem to figure out why they don’t get monster speed. Completely forgetting that a goodly proportion of them at home now use wireless and that makes the 100meg service suck.

Remember that DOCSIS 3.0 at this point is just a moniker for downstream channel bonding; upstream channels, whatever they might be, are still the same speed. Hence the wildly unbalanced tiers that cable is promoting all over the place.

Want more info? Well, to my knowledge everyone on DOCSIS in North America except Comcast, Cox and Cablevision are still using DOCSIS 1.1 for upload channels. They *might* have DOCSIS 2.0 enabled for uploads but being DOCSIS 1.1 only easily explains why uploads are limited to 5 Mbps: you can’t get much more out of the spec. Converely, when I switched to Comcast’s 50/10 tier for a bit to try it out I got 20 Mbps up on PowerBoost. So the tech is there, but using it is a whole other matter.

FWIW, $150/400GB is actually a better deal than $46/100GB, though both are crappy in my opinion. If you’re going to cap my speed, make sure to cap transfer amounts with a decreasing per-GB price gradient ending in 20¢/GB or so. Or allow me to pick my speed and transfer cap independently, so if I want tons of speed but won’t use my connection for much, I shouldn’t be charged $150 for the privelege of a fast connection five minutes out of the day.

Another FWIW: Novus (the Canadian fiber operator) also has caps, and they’re also rather spendy per GB. That said, they actually offer really high speeds and caps high enough on “normal” tiers that you won’t run into them every time you turn around. Want 500+ GB per month? It’s $250 for the privilege, but you do get a blistering 60 Mbps of upload and download speed. Would be nice if Novus made the tier 100/50 or 100/100 to beat Shaw at their own game, but you’re still looking at a connection faster than practically any server can provide. For something on the lighter side, 20/20 fiber is $80 and has a rather reasonable 180GB cap. Or for light users, 20 Mbps down, 10 Mbps up service with a 110 GB cap is a mere $37.50 per month, CAD.

I’d take 20 Mbps symmetric though, and torrent elsewhere.

Cable broadband services seem reluctant to dramatically increase upload speed even with DOCSIS 3. True fiber to the home connections seem to be the future for synchronous (same upload/download) speeds.

I would pay $150 a month for a connection that didn’t castrate my ability to run cheap VoIP/Web/File/Gaming/Email servers, or hell, let me send a home movie to a friend in less than a week.