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.

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 were 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.

StoptheCap! 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.