Stop the Cap!

It was a good thing we launched when we did.  The Working Families Party and the Alliance for Quality Education were stuck with Stopthecap.org for their new website to protest New York Governor David Patterson’s plan to cap property taxes in New York State.  They launched a high price advertising campaign across the state to get people to contact their elected officials and get them to say no:

Property Taxes are a real problem. But the tax cap gimmick will hurt our schools, and won’t even reduce property taxes. 

If you arrived here looking for that website, it’s because you reflexively typed stopthecap.com into your web browser.  But before you go, take a moment and read up on an issue New Yorkers are likely to face in the next twelve months - unjustified usage caps on your Internet access, now proposed or being tested by two major Internet providers in the state - Frontier Communications and Time-Warner’s Road Runner service.

We’re devoted to protecting consumer interests, and as a fellow New Yorker that is already paying too much for everything in the Empire State, the last thing we all need is to cough up $40 a month (or more) for Internet access that limits you to watching two movies a month, or charges you outrageous overage fees for anything you use above the limit.

One of the usual excuses given to promote the need for usage caps on residential broadband accounts is the person on the network who has fired up their peer-to-peer sharing application (usually torrent software) and has left the thing running 24/7 for the entire month.  This person is inevitably held up as an example in the pro-cap community as someone who is “abusing the network” by downloading terabytes worth of data “that no person could reasonably use in a month.”

There have been some interesting reports on the impact of peer-to-peer applications on broadband in the last two weeks (”20% Drop in p2p on AT&T Backbone Other video, like YouTube and Hulu, twice as high” - DSL Prime, 8/1/2008).  Ask a torrent fan what they enjoy getting the most from using such applications and it usually turns out to be television shows.  With the advent of more… authorized methods of accessing favorite programs, including Hulu, Joost, iTunes, and the network websites themselves, people can get near instant gratification without waiting hours, if not days, for a coveted episode to finally arrive over some BitTorrent site.

Is there something missing from the usual equation offered by cap advocates that “excessive/abusive use” + “limited bandwidth” = a usage cap to “better manage network traffic?”

Also, is there a place in the discussion for bandwidth providers to better dialogue with their customers, educating them about the impact of running certain file sharing peer-to-peer software on a continuous basis, not only on network traffic, but also potentially slowing down the connection for everyone else in the house?  How many parents have only the most limited knowledge about the software their kids are running?  And if it’s the head of the household running the software, do they even know how much bandwidth such tools could consume if left running continuously.

Do you think people would respond to a voluntary request by providers to not run such software unattended for hour after hour, day after day?  Would a customer be more inclined to reduce usage knowing that a voluntary reduction could mean not having to place caps on every customer?  What are your feelings about such a proposal?  Would it be effective?  Or do you dismiss the peer to peer traffic argument entirely?

Part of the purpose of Stop the Cap! is to offer some potential new ideas with providers genuinely interested in traffic management and not simply imposing caps as a way to increase revenue.  Your comments and advocacy for or against this idea are welcome.  Just hit the Comments button under the article headline and share your views.  Providers do read Stop the Cap! and many are genuinely interested in reading your views.

On August 13th, Microsoft’s motherload of bug fixes, updates, and upgrades landed on the desktop in my office, which still runs Microsoft XP.  From ActiveX Killbits to the Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool - August edition, some 14 patches adding up to 37 megabytes of data were delivered over my broadband connection.  Considering the fact we maintain three desktops and three laptops here, that 37 megabytes just became 222 megabytes, just for whatever problems Microsoft uncovered this month.

In a usage cap environment, even routine software updates count against your monthly bandwidth allotment.  And don’t forget to include the frequent updates to anti-virus, anti-spyware and other related applications that will bring updates sometimes more than once per day.

While no single application of this type will consume an enormous amount of bandwidth, the impact is cumulative.  A little here, a little there, and suddenly you find yourself over the limit.

It’s just one more talking point to consider mentioning in a broadband world hampered by usage caps and limits.

[Update: A great comment from rreay reminds me of these updates in the last week or two as well.  Anyone have any more to add to the list?]

• The recent iPhone/iPod touch update was 250 MB.
• 60 MB for the last iTunes/Quicktime update.

[Editor's Note: As promised, Stop the Cap! now moves on to expanding coverage of the issue of broadband usage caps by North America's other broadband providers.  In the coming weeks, we'll be reviewing the plans, proposals, and implementation of caps by companies large and small.  We will also continue to report on how this potentially impacts on our national competitiveness, considerations of Net Neutrality issues, and addressing the digital divide by information-have's and have-nots.] 

Beaumont, Texas

Beaumont, on the eastern border of Texas with Louisiana, is one of America’s mid-sized cities of just over 100,000 people, best known for the Texas Wildcatters, a smattering of oil and gas companies, and the first advance by Time Warner, America’s second largest cable television company, into this year’s issue of bandwidth usage caps.

Company officials first announced the market test in January, impacting only new customers in Road Runner’s Golden Triangle Division with usage caps ranging from 5GB for the Lite Tier plan to 40GB for the Turbo Tier.  The charge for exceeding your plan’s cap is $1 per gigabyte.

Like other companies talking about usage caps, everyone likes to use their own internal definitions of what 1GB of usage represents.  Time Warner’s is:

1GB gets you about 70,000 e-mails, 34 hours of gaming or 1,344 hours of Web browsing; or, it’s the approximate equivalent of downloading 569 photos, 277 music files, 7 hours of low-resolution video (YouTube), 3 hours of standard definition streaming video or 45 minutes of high-definition streaming video.

Again, my own calculations bring some different numbers to the table, and, honestly, does anyone really worry about going over a usage cap from reading e-mail and web browsing alone?

Randomly grabbing 277 MP3 music files consumed 1.56GB of usage.  Downloading 569 photos assumes your collection consists of pictures averaging 1.75MB apiece.  I grabbed some digital photos I took to Walgreens for printing and looked at the files I uploaded to their server.  My pictures, at high resolution (but not extremely high) come closer to 8MB apiece.  One episode of Law & Order (around 42 minutes without the commercials and dropping the stream before the end credits rolled) consumed 360MB at standard definition rates.  As noted earlier, a movie delivered by Akamai can consume 6-9GB for just one 720p high definition film, nearly double that if you choose the 1080 version.

Taking each of these activities into consideration individually, usage caps of 20GB a month (or 40GB) don’t immediately sound alarming.  But people do not use their Internet connections for a single activity, and the more people you bring to the table, such as in a four person household, the easier it is to see just how quickly a family, especially with teenagers, will quickly exceed even these kinds of caps.

Beaumont residents are the first to participate in a Road Runner trial with usage capped.

There are users out there who use their connections for little more than basic e-mail and occasional web browsing, and Time Warner offering a plan at a discount for those users is not a problem, assuming they actually promote such plans to potential customers.  The greater issue comes from a service provider charges the same price (or more) for a plan that is now seriously limited by a cap.  And to date, there has been no proposal for retaining an “unlimited” tier in addition to offering a range of capped tiers for those who figure they will use considerably less.

Wireless telephone companies, which historically sold usage in plans with buckets of minutes, are now moving towards offering flat rate options - pay one price, talk all you like, while the broadband industry, which marketed “unlimited, always on” connections for a variety of content they include in their advertising are now headed in the other direction, limiting consumer choice and access.

Time Warner has been complaining about broadband growth as both a content distributor and as a bandwidth provider, which adds an interesting twist to the rationale companies have to implement caps.

Saul Hansell, a reporter and blogger for The NY Times, noted company officials are growing tired of basic cable networks making them pay license fees for content, and then seeing that content being given away on the web.

Speculation that bandwidth caps may also have to do with limiting the amount of streaming video that consumers watch have also been offered as a reason for providers adding caps to their Internet service.

Time Warner’s rationale for bandwidth capping was, according to the company itself, to control what they felt was excessive use of their network.

“This is not targeted at people who download movies from Apple,” Time Warner spokesman Alex Dudley told the NY Times. “This is aimed at people who use peer-to-peer networks and download terabytes.”

And again that brings up the question of how a 20-40GB cap is the most effective way to control a minority of users running a torrent client or server 24/7 and consuming terabytes over an entire month.  That is the equivalent of dropping a nuclear weapon on a pesty moth.  The weapon does get the moth, but it also impacts on a far larger circle of customers that don’t come close to consuming that level of data.  Every ISP has language in their contracts with customers that allow them to cut off the 24/7 torrent addict today.  Some, including Comcast, have enforced these kinds of provisions before without a usage cap.

To date, consumer reaction in Beaumont has been mixed.  Many are convinced the caps are unjustified, too low, or simply too expensive for what you get.  Others object to the excessive rate of $1 per gigabyte for overage fees.  Some don’t like the idea of having to measure everything they do online in fear of exceeding a usage cap.  There are also some that like the idea of paying for what they use, and are willing to consider different plans based on what they actually consume if it also means they get the speeds they were promised in advertising.

Dudley argues that the usage cap issue is not a foregone conclusion at Time Warner.  Dudley told GigaOm that TWC’s experiment in Texas was just that – a test. If consumers don’t want it, the company is going to back away from it. “I think this is a trial and we are going to learn from this trial,” he said.

Stop the Cap! wants the company to learn as well.  If you ask customers if they’d prefer paying the same amount they do today for unlimited access or capped access, there will be little surprise as to the outcome.

Now that we’ve reached the two week anniversary of Frontier’s inclusion of a 5GB clause in their Acceptable Use Policy first going up on their website, it’s probably useful to provide the latest information in a summary format.  Additionally, we’re now reaching a point where new information about Frontier’s consideration of the cap is slowing down as the company ponders where things go from here.  So here is the latest summary of where things stand:

1) Frontier has published on their website two references to usage information.  Their marketing indicates that 5GB of usage is provided as part of their DSL account.  The company has now also publicly stated that until they state otherwise, they are not going to charge overages or terminate accounts for exceeding that usage.  When we get news of a date if/when that changes, we’ll let you know.

2) Their marketing material online indicates customers with “price protection agreements” will not be subject to any usage caps for the duration of their contract.  Assuming that language is inserted into their actual contract for customers, that could be the one good thing to come out of this.  (Hint to Frontier’s marketing gurus - if you offer a cap-free plan in return for a service agreement, we’ll sing its praises and I’d personally recommend it.)

After all, the goal of this site is to advocate for a cap-free Internet experience, and we’ll praise any company offering one.

3) The company continues to take input from customers on the matter, and we encourage people to share their views with Frontier regarding usage caps in general.  I personally hope they will drop the entire idea altogether and ride the marketing potential their service would have should the cable industry adopt caps or limits.  If you are not comfortable with where things stand on this issue, you have the right to take your business elsewhere.

We’ll be continuing to follow this issue as developments warrant.  Frontier is not the only company out there contemplating capping their customers, so Stop the Cap! must also delve into what the cable industry is up to, and there is plenty to report there.

Yesterday, Stop the Cap! raised the issue of how exactly Frontier Communications can offer access to the various “extras” the company offers to broadband customers all while limiting them to 5GB of consumption.

A number of readers have shared exactly the same concerns, not only with us, but the company as well.

It is interesting watching our concerns here get answered with shifting policies and vague promises over there, both on the Frontier website and in replies to customer inquiries.  Unfortunately, they keep digging the hole they’ve gotten themselves into deeper and deeper with every passing day.

Intentionally or not, Frontier has now stepped on the landmine of the Net Neutrality debate.

Stop the Cap! reader William received a reply from Frontier that was remarkable for its less-than-certain tone, and the latest company line:

I can certainly understand your frustration and confusion on who’s
statement’s to follow.

Unfortunately at the present all we know is what we have been told about the situation and that is that we (Frontier) are reserving the right to charge or terminate service for those that exceed the cap.

Currently feedback such as yours is being recorded and passed on to those that are in charge of this proposed change.

The email your received is correct, we are not currently enforcing this policy and we have been informed that, at the present, the plan is to start the enforcement part of the policy in December or January. Again that is the current time table we have been made aware of.

I do know that we have been made aware that certain activities such as carbonite backup and other services we offer can be excluded from the bandwidth usage. I wish I could offer more information with regards to the plan, unfortunately what was/is published is what there is to know at the present. We are passing all feedback to higher levels and it is possible the plan may change before it goes live so to speak.

I know the above does not answer all your questions, unfortunately since the plan is not finalized I can only offer what information I know to be accurate at the present.

There are several points raised in this reply.

First, it’s clear that those contacting Frontier’s support team should recognize the support personnel are absolutely not responsible for the corporate policy decisions being made by management in Connecticut.  It is patently obvious to a lot of readers who have heard back from Frontier that there is no great enthusiasm for a usage cap among a lot of folks working for the company.  We have always tried to draw a strong line between those responsible for these usage caps - upper management, and the employees who are stuck having to implement them.  We have nothing but good things to say about the support people who are in a tough position on this issue.

Second, our own sources have confirmed the timetable outlined in this reply from Frontier’s support personnel.  And again, that is entirely a management decision.

Frontier Steps on Net Neutrality Landmine As It Digs the PR Hole Deeper and Deeper Over a 5GB Usage Cap. (Slowpoke used by permission, copyright 2006, Jen Sorensen - Visit http://www.slowpokecomics.com.)

Third, Frontier’s newest acknowledgement that they are considering excluding their preferred partners from the usage cap now opens the can of worms over the Net Neutrality issue.

Certain telecommunications companies have been attempting to change the Internet as we know it today.  Currently, every online service has an equal shot on the network.  But some companies want to change the playing field, by offering selected partners “enhanced” access to customers, faster data networks, and more prominent placement, either by paying a higher fee or entering into a partnership with an Internet Service Provider (ISP).

A “preferred partner” quickly becomes the cream rising to the top, not based on their merits, but rather by their deep pockets and willingness to pay their way to number one.  Better yet, such partnerships allow both companies to reap the rewards gained from driving more subscribers to the content they wish to promote, and enjoying the enhanced advertising revenue which often accompanies such services.

More alarming are efforts to manipulate customers by penalizing them for accessing non-preferred content, and a usage cap or bandwidth limitation on those services that lack a preferred partner agreement is a great way to accomplish that.

This doesn’t just manipulate the playing field, it destroys it, giving enormous advantages to a select few.

Such agreements will devastate a lot of start-up companies that have brought the most creative and revolutionary new services to the Net.  Virtually all of these companies would not exist without reaching out to investors for initial financing.  In a world without Net Neutrality, inevitably one of the questions that will be asked is whether or not that start-up has any “preferred relationship” with a bandwidth provider.  If that company does not, questions will be raised about the viability of that venture, especially if usage caps and bandwidth limits are widespread.  And once an agreement is made, how does someone new break through?  Under these conditions, expect a number of investors to simply take a walk.

Stop the Cap! has previously raised questions about ISP’s making an end run around Net Neutrality by imposing caps but exempting content or services accessed from that provider’s web portal.  That has always been our prediction, but until today, there has not been a real world example of that practice in action or imminent.

Now, Frontier Communications is poised to prove us right once again by potentially giving cap-free, preferential treatment to their partners, but sticking it to every other video content provider or online backup service where the 5GB cap will apply.

Ask yourself: Would you use an online service that consumed significant bandwidth that was subject to a usage cap or one that was exempted from it?  Is this what you are paying for every month - to be told what services and sites to visit and effectively penalizing you for choosing to make up your own mind?

It’s just one more reason why usage caps are an incredibly bad idea, and one that actually invites government scrutiny, if not direct oversight.  It’s an issue we intend to raise with our elected officials.  I’m certain Frontier Communications had no intention of being a poster child for the issue of Net Neutrality, but as we’ve seen time and time again in the short time Stop the Cap! has been online, there is a fundamental disconnect by upper management in understanding the implications and consequences of what they thought would simply be a great way to enhance profits and reduce “excessive usage.”

We have completed a software upgrade which should help improve the viewing experience for those still using Internet Explorer 6.  It also should have corrected a few minor formatting issues for certain browsers.

In other site developments:

1. I have cleaned up our categories and tags.  As the site grows larger, readers will find it easier to locate articles about their specific ISP or issues that impact them the most.  The Categories tab on the left of your screen will grow as articles appear relating to other service providers or broadband platforms.  When you click the category name, all articles regarding that category will be displayed to you in date order.  The tags and categories are also more uniform and standardized.
2. Our first wave of comment spam began about 24 hours ago so we enabled some spam prevention tools which should purge most of it before it becomes visible.  If you use our Comment feature, which is available on every article here through a link just below the headline, please note that occasionally legitimate comments may be held up until they are approved by me.  In most cases, doing things like putting more than two links in a comment or using key phrases or words which might be commonly used in spam may get the comment placed in the “waiting approval queue.”  Please allow a few hours for me to get that comment approved.  We do not censor legitimate comments, even if they disagree with the author (or other comments).  But please be respectful and avoid personal attacks on other people here.
3. The latest comments across all of our articles can now be seen on the left side of your screen just below the list of recent articles.  I would prefer to see more of the actual comments displayed instead of just the subjects, so look for an improvement soon.
4. Traffic on this site has grown dramatically since we went live at the end of July, and there has been some site drag because of the intense interest in this subject.  If you’re new, welcome aboard.  If you’re a regular reader, it’s greatly appreciated.  We will be moving to a new server shortly to provide a better experience for our thousands of readers.
5. If you experience any problems accessing or viewing the site, find an error, or have any comments or suggestions, please use the Contact link at the top of the page and let us know!  Your news tips, story ideas, and ongoing participation really make this a better site for everyone.

Thanks again for the tremendous support and your steadfast opposition to usage caps and bandwidth limits.  Together we can continue to send a strong message to any provider that takes customers for granted and attempts to manipulate the facts to justify charging more money for less service.  Keep up the fight!

Free Press, a media reform group, issued a damning report (Adobe Reader required) Friday about efforts by the broadband industry to introduce metered or capped Internet access plans, accusing the industry of engaging in scare tactics and making an end run around the Net Neutrality debate.

“Consumers should not have to choose between secret and arbitrary blocking and the very unreasonable practice of metering,” said S. Derek Turner, research director of Free Press and author of the policy brief. “That is a false choice, one most providers don’t even consider necessary or practical. These scare tactics shouldn’t deter anyone from pursuing the policies we need to preserve a free and open Internet.”

Among the conclusions of the brief:

• It is a false choice to suggest that since Internet service providers cannot arbitrarily block online content, they will be forced to meter. There are a whole host of other non-discriminatory options available to providers that are more effective at managing congestion.
• Talk of metering is not new and has nothing to do with the FCC’s laudable decision to prohibit providers from blocking applications. Cox has had bandwidth caps in place since 2003 but was still caught blocking applications. Time Warner floated plans to meter as early as 2002.
• Metering is the wrong solution for Internet users. History shows that consumers strongly prefer simple, flat-rate pricing to metering. They do not want to look over their shoulder and face surprise higher monthly bills. This is likely to encourage all subscribers – not just high-bandwidth users — to curb their Internet use.
• Metering is bad business for Internet service providers. Not only does it decrease Internet use, it discourages the development of and demand for new and innovative applications that give the Internet its value. ISPs that meter are likely to see a subscription drop that hurts their bottom line.
• Congestion should be treated as a short-term problem, while continued investments are made to keep pace with demand. Offering simplicity and abundance is the best outcome for users, providers and the future of the Internet.

Stop the Cap! applauds Free Press for joining an increasing number of industry watchdog groups and consumers vehemently opposed to price-gouging usage caps and highly arbitrary caps on Internet access.  In the United States, broadband providers attempting to drum up attention for a so-called “bandwidth crisis” have proposed usage limitations ranging from 5GB per month to 250GB per month, with each proposal considered “effective” at controlling usage.

So many features that Frontier associates with your DSL account become largely useless with the imposition of a 5GB cap on monthly usage, as many have you have written to share.

Rural, among others reminds us that Frontier’s ESPN360 service provides Frontier customers with live streaming of up to 10 simultaneous game streams.  Partnering ISPs like Frontier offer access with no subscription fee, so their customers can use their broadband connections to watch some great sporting events.

With Frontier’s newly planned 5GB usage cap, ESPN360 becomes ESPN5, because it won’t take long to hit your usage cap with this service, which streams at speeds starting at 768kbps!

The HD Web: Akamai's plan to help meet the demands of HD quality video online are easily threatened by draconian broadband usage caps, such as the one planned by Frontier Communications.

Even more devastating, points out reader Tom, is Frontier’s partnership with Dish Network, which offers customers an HD Digital Video Recorder.

“This HD DVR also allows Dish Online for PPV which is content downloaded through the broadband connection,” Tom writes.

“Ironically though, should you sign up for their phone/internet/dish offer, you would quickly reach the cap if you used the PPV service,” he adds.

It’s not just HD content from Dish that is threatened with a 5GB usage cap.  Akamai, an industry leader in content distribution, has launched a cutting edge demonstration site for the kinds of broadband video content that will be commonplace in the next few years, most of which consume between 7.5mbps for 720p content, 13.5mbps per second for 1080i content.  For an average high definition quality movie, that is the equivalent of consuming 5-9GB for just one film!

Given these encoding rates, a typical half-hour television show encoded for TV quality at 4-6 megabits per second results in a file size of approximately 450 Megabytes, and 2.25 Gigabytes for HD quality. A two-hour feature film encoded for DVD quality would result in a 5.4 Gigabyte file, and for HD quality would result in a file size of approximately 9 Gigabytes. — “Akamai White Paper - Highly Distributed Computing is Key to Quality on The HD Web”

Try visiting the HDWeb website with your Frontier DSL service.  These are precisely the kinds of applications that are coming to broadband homes across America, but Frontier has made the decision for you - these just are not for you.  So much for wanting to deliver the Internet experience their customers want.  With a 5GB cap, these services are strictly off-limits you bandwidth piggy.

William has discovered another ironically named service from Frontier that becomes effectively useless with a 5GB usage cap: Frontier’s Peace of Mind add-on includes an “unlimited backup” solution that will store your precious files on their servers, so they can be recovered in case your hard drive crashes.  But if you are backing up more than 5GB of files, there will be no peace for you.  And, to frost this cake, they say you can use the service on up to five PC’s in your household!

“How can they offer to back up 5 PC’s with only 5 gigs of bandwidth?” he asks.

“One 200 gigabyte hard drive will take 40 months to back up at that rate and take more than 6 1/2 years if I need to recover [all of my] data,” he said.

Anyway you slice your monthly allotment of 5GB, just using the services Frontier itself markets to its customers guarantees more and more customers will exceed their cap, potentially by huge amounts.  And for families taking advantage of Frontier’s advice for a shared home network, once you bring the rest of the family to your Internet connection, what happens the day the FedEx delivery guy brings you your Internet bill in a box, just loaded with overage fees.  Are you prepared for Internet Bill Sticker Shock?  If you thought that text message-loaded cell phone bill was bad news to the family budget, wait until you discover the kind of Peace of Mind a 5GB usage cap provides a family of four.

[Update: The company has now suggested it may exempt its own partners from any usage caps or limits, but this has not yet been formalized.]

Earlier this week, it actually looked as if Frontier might actually be listening to their customers.  They two-stepped around the threatening exceed 5GB at your peril language in their Acceptable Use Policy by having the delightful marketing people soothe your fears with promises not to cut anyone off or charge anyone extra… for now.

I don’t expect them to change their minds just because we think it’s a good idea.  Customers are calling to cancel or threaten to do so, particularly in Rochester as we spread the word.  Time Warner is signing up a lot of new customers locally this week as folks exit Frontier.  But in other Frontier service areas, it’s apparently still the best kept secret in town and there hasn’t been too much pushback… yet.  That’s not too surprising considering there is really no pressing reason to ever go to the Frontier website, so how would anyone know?

While folks in the call centers are being told Frontier is pulling back on the idea of a cap, for now, that’s not what management is thinking.

Indeed in their minds, it’s not the 5GB cap that’s the problem, it was only the way it was introduced to their customers which caused all of the problems.  Has Frontier hired Michael Brown, former head of FEMA?  Who are these people and why are they still drinking the Kool-Aid?

The game plan is still set - find friendly media to tell the story of the fictional “bandwidth crisis,” send mailers home inside phone bills, try and pass the cap off as an idea that Time Warner and Comcast are already contemplating (so it’s all their fault?), and that there is unfairness in the world without a usage cap, as someone down the street steals your bandwidth and doesn’t want to pay his fair share for it.

If Frontier has a game plan, than so shall Stop the Cap!

We have spent a lot of time and attention on Rochester, and we encourage people in the Flower City to continue sending the message that usage caps are not acceptable, and take your business elsewhere.  But now it’s time for us to spread the word to other communities stuck with Frontier Communications.  If you are living in a Frontier service area outside of Rochester, the time has come to organize and get evangelical about usage caps.  Please either reply with a public comment or send me a private message on our Contact form letting me you want to be part of the Frontier Truth Squad.  Then, we can begin to identify local community forums in which we can spread the message of the 5GB usage cap.  Let’s get it in the local media, spread it around town, and educate customers about the real facts and their alternatives.  Then let’s help them get signed up somewhere else, and say goodbye to an ISP that still seriously contemplates a 5GB usage cap on their customers even after the negative customer reaction and publicity they are receiving.

There is still time for Frontier to repent and restore its good reputation as an honorable alternative to whatever cable has to sell, but time, and customers, are running out.  Dump the cap.