Matte brought this up in another thread...in OZ they have limited bandwidth and I'm just curious to see how many people this affects

do you have restrictions on your bandwidth? If so what part of the world are you living in?

And lastly do you see your things changing soon to unlimited bandwidth?

Do you mean capped adsl or bandwidth limits on hosting packages?  Either way South Africa has both.

meant capped adsl

interested in the personal Internet user sitting in his/home being restricted to using X amount of bandwidth per month and how that plays into their surfing behaviour

for example Matte says he's careful about watching videos because of his bandwidth- something i would have never thought of

Just curious to see how many people this affects, and how they 'behave online'- for example i check out tons of stores before buying something online- would someone else only check a few (possibly the first few in the SERPS and that's it)

Yip I'm the same as Matte - I avoid videos if possible.  My man likes playing those online shootem up games like battlefield 1942 etc (infact that's what he's doing right now) - he swears it uses minimal bandwidth though.

Another way capped adsl affects us is on peer to peer torrents.  We have to set the upload speed to 1kb per second otherwise all the 'seeders' (I think that's the term) would use far too much of our cap.

For interest, typically plans start from A$29.95 per month for 2gb bandwidth up to A$130pm for 140gb.

edit: speeded here range from 256k download up to 8mb (top of the range!!) though some claim 24 (as if)

Most folks I know are in the 256-512k download brackets

in the uk at home I have an 8mg download speed ( reality 4.5 to 5 mg ) with approx 500kb upload . Usage is capped at 40g / month which in real terms means that I dont worry at all about my usage

cost is £ 25 / month but this includes free telphone calls to uk and abroad 24 hours

another comparison is my office connection which is purly broadband ( no telephone calls ) which is 24mg download 2mg upload ( if uploading is high it will take some of my download effectivley up to 18 mg up )unlimited usage - no cap - which costs £ 30/month

I get the impression that although uk is not the best we are much better than other countries

Lets see now...

Phoneline: £17.50/month
Unlimited* 8Mb** ADSL 2 (ethernet over atm / framed ethernet): $7.50/month***

*Unlimited has a fair usage policy. While many providers use this clause and state a fair usage policy of between 30Gb and 40Gb downloaded, my prover just says 'if your usage become so great that it has a detrimental effect on our other cusomers'

**getting between 4Mb and 5Mb download and 500Kb upload.

***This is because I am existing O2 customer in an O2 provided area. My O2 (cell phone) contract is £25/month. If I wasn't with O2 then the BB would be £12.50/month or over £20/month if in an area not yet supported by O2

I also pay £2.24/month for unlimited calls on skype to certain UK land line numbers.

In total that's over £50/month for all my comms - and I am very happy with what i get for that.

For years I paid £24/month for a 1mb download speed, unlimited download bandwidth. This was with pipex. Even when providers started to offer it for $6.50/month I stayed with pipex because they were great. pipex used to own a lot of the physical infrastructure of the UK...spot on. But then they got bought out by tiscali - who i would not recommend.

We also had a saying for wanadoo - "no-can-do". No idea if they're still in business or not.

Never really considered BT. Guessed they had a 'closed'/'captured' market and pushed the prices up and the services down.....but I have no evidence to support that - it's like disliking microsoft because they're so big; I don't trust BT as I feel they could get away with almost anything.

On a side note - I have no idea about cable.

Also, SDSL lines are available (same upload/download speeds) with a 1:1 contention ratio. No idea how much these are, but my last company had one for an office of 20 staff.

Until recently I was on a monthly 1 gig plan for $49.95 (AUS). Downloading anything larger than a PDF wasn't possible. I've since 'upgraded' to 3 gig per month for $89.95 (down from $119.95). I have to use wireless as ADSL isn't available in my area.

Trouble with Oz is there's not enough competition... yet.

We live in eternal hope!

Wendy

wendyann, there is another alternative.

I would hate to have to limit what I download...that would be annoying.

In Australia westnet have a broadband plan for $59.95/mth (4gb peak/4gb off peak)

I've just increased mine to (10gb/10gb) $69.95/mth...I'm building websites full-time at the moment and that's plenty for me. We can download anything we want and more with that.

If we exceed our limit, we don't get excess charges as some companies do, westnet just slow down the speed until the end of the month.

Nice to meet you.

ER

Unfortunately for Roxanne and I, South Africa is raping the market. Adsl is stupid expensive if you want speeds coming close to yours, only very large companies or businesses that are very bandwidth intensive would even consider anything more than 10Gb a month.

At the moment I use my cellphones HSDPA with a prepaid sim card and R190 airtime (500mb), it lasts about 20 Days when I only upload and download changes to websites... and my missus whacks facebook. At work we survive on a 5GB 512kb line (DSL) (128kb up, 512kb down) - Unlimited bandwidth and a 4mb line are a really rich mans game down here. Then again, the only competition for bandwidth is over the 3g/hspa cellphone networks, Telkom is still the only company you can get an adsl line from, therefor they can pump the prices up and laugh because our only options are to pay, go wireless (unreliable) or stay offline. (ironic considering telkom keeps on messing up the "only" lines south africa has) We have been cut off a few times from outside of SA websites in the last 3 months.

I cant wait for the Emirates though, 8mb lines stock standard... man, if I get myself online I will be meeting Roxannes hubby in battlefield, I was a regular before I moved to wireless

RAESteyn wrote:

I cant wait for the Emirates though, 8mb lines stock standard... man, if I get myself online I will be meeting Roxannes hubby in battlefield, I was a regular before I moved to wireless

I was just moaned at because apparently it is Battlefield 2, not 1942

wendyann wrote:

Until recently I was on a monthly 1 gig plan for $49.95 (AUS). Downloading anything larger than a PDF wasn't possible. I've since 'upgraded' to 3 gig per month for $89.95 (down from $119.95). I have to use wireless as ADSL isn't available in my area.

Sounds like you and Elizabeth should find out who Mattes ISP is because, correct me if I'm wrong, but sounds as if he's getting a much better deal & is in OZ too.


Currently, here's my set up, excluding telephone:

ADSL line Rental - R 134
3 Gig ADSL Cap (364kb) - R 125
Nightrider addition - R 25 (enables me to get an extra 12 gigs between 1am-8am)

Dont feel bad, Battlefield 1942 is the original... so you were still in the right ballpark Battlefield 2 is just the epiphany of awesomeness in a more modern setting.

and I thought our connections were too expensive -

20 euros ($30), 2mbit download (128kbit upload), 15gb cap (after that goes to lousy 64kbit) - mostly enough for me, even with a lot of video/online time, and I almost never shut down my mail client or the PC in general. I also have 1 more connection (25 euros or $35-40) which I'm sharing with my mates, 4 mbit connection, limited to 100 GB/month.

Also available is a 12 mbit connection, with about 400GB monthly cap for 30 euros (almost $50), but that's with a phone connection and doesn't have the phone connection prepay calculated in it (and since I don't have a landline phone, the above options seemed more reasonable at the time).

Well in the USA we use a company called COX, I think it used to have a bandwidth usage limitation of 30GB back around 2003. But I am fairly sure that they do not have any limitations anymore, at least I have never had a problem. At one time we had a renter that downloaded music and video for 40 hours straight and on a regular basis, our ISP COX never said a word.

Currently the fee for unlimited bandwidth is like $50 a month with ↓ 15Mbps ↑ 1.5Mbps so if we were hosting a few sites, bandwidth probably would not be a problem.

Thanks ER

We are locked into a contract with our provider at the moment. Where we are is considered "country" even though it's only 40kms from Brisbane City. That's why we can only get wireless broadband (not adsl or cable)

Wireless is more more expensive, not sure why.

Ah well it's still better than dial-up!

Wendy

Interestingly even places only 20km from the CBD can only get wireless.
If you live on the other side of the street you can get regular broadband tho!

Here in Turkey, the cheapest ADSL plan is 1MBit download/250KBit upload for 30 YTL (15 - 20 $) with 4 GB download limit, upload is limitless. Limitless plan for the same speed is close to the two times of limited one. The highest plan for ADSL is 4 MBit with limitless download and that is 100 $. Also upload in the highest plan is 1 MBit.
4 GB limit is a real barrier, when I decide to download something in a half hour I can download 400 MB, so my limit will be exceeded after 5 hours. Prices for the data downloaded over the limit are 1 $ for 15 MBs.
Also there are VDSL but I don't know about it, there is not many people using that. It is about 32 MBit for 100$.
Also there is QuickNet (fiberoptics to the home) but it is very restricted, it is used only in some parts of three biggest cities. Its cheapest priced plan (1Mbit) equals to 1Mbit limitless ADSL, but highest one (100 MB/s down/ 5MB/s up) is about 100$. In order to use QuickNet in our area we have to find 1000 users and apply for it, that is because they want at least 1000 users for an area to bring there QuickNet access.
Also there is no HSDPA connection yet, since two years I buy HSDPA supported phones and even broke them but none couldn't tested 3G here yet.
Also here videos are not important issue, because access to most of the video sharing sites like Youtube is banned.

Also here videos are not important issue, because access to most of the video sharing sites like Youtube is banned.

I think that as we come up against capacity restrictions (only just so much data can go through the pipe at once) that high capacity required things like video and audio will be pegged back at some stage.

Like air-conditioning and its drain on power resources, eventually the community will realise how selfish such resource hungry these things (incl video banthwith needs) are.

@matte
Problem is not the pipes, it is brains using the pipes.
Not only Youtube, but also many other sites including thepiratebay.org, richarddawkins.net, wordpress and many more sites. Also lastly Blogger was banned. There are many reasons for bans, some videos with swear words to Atatürk, live video broadcasts of football matches...
Only one person named Adnan Oktar is responsible of banning of about 60 websites. He says there is offensive things about him and complains to courts, than the site is banned, that's so easy.
Now we, as Turkish bloggers and some İnternet users, are planning to do sth. to tell all the people about İnternet bans, trying to tell them these bans are illegal, even if they are applied according to laws.
In August, about 450 administrator closed their sites to protest the bans. However, we couldn't see any benefit, they continue to ban, ban, ban.

Also Turkish premier president says "Have three children!". However, he doesn't tell how? Youporn, 89.com... all are banned.

The problem is now everyone is transmitting information via video when a PDF would probably be adequate. I wonder if they realise how many potential customers they lose because watching a video is just too painful for those on low speed connections.

I agree with Matte, eventually there will have to be a line drawn in the sand re bandwidth.

Wendy