How much is enough?
After flirting with "flat rate" plans, ISPs are again capping users.
Remember how Telecom canned Go Large? Even with the restrictions placed on the plan, Go Large users chewed up three to four times as much data as other Telecom DSL users.
Now Woosh has decided to cap its Orbit Flatrate plan to 10GB because...
You may have noticed a performance decrease over the last few months. This has been the result of high demand on our Orbit Flatrate plan. We want all customers to get the most enjoyment from their broadband connection, and as such we have decided that the plan withdrawal is necessary to ensure ongoing quality of service.
The new 10GB plan costing $50 a month will come into effect on June 1 says Woosh.
It looks like the "pain threshold" at which ISPs' networks and possibly also their slim profit margins break is at a comparatively low 5 to 10GB per customer.
"Who uses that much? I get by on 500MB a month," some people protest whenever data usage is discussed. That is true: if all you use your Internet connection for is reading email and a bit of web browsing, 1GB a month is probably ample.
However, try using VoIP, Joost or Vuze P2PTV for instance and you'll go through 1GB in a few hours. Joost uses 756kbit/s down and 256kbit/s up worth of bandwidth; not exactly staggering figures, but it works out at over 400MB per hour.
Ten gigabytes of data provides 25 hours of Joosting a month, or six hours and fifteen minutes a week. Remember though, that's just for Joost: if you use your connection for anything else like updating Windows, the 10GB cap will shrink faster.
Yes, I know: watching TV over the Internet is hardly a high-priority activity in the grand scheme of things and we still have Ye Olde Analogue broadcasts that serve us just fine without busting data caps.
But let's say we want to use our Internet connections for more than just email and a spot of web browsing - dial-up handles that in fact, no broadband needed. How much data do we need?
I'm picking moderate usage should be between 30 to 50GB a month. Heavy usage, twice that. However, I suspect the Internet in NZ at least would melt down at such usage levels...
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Comments
My friend in Japan gets 4 megabits at all times of the day and the upload is the same. They pay around $20NZD a month for it. They also have phones which send emails instead of SMS and it's also cheap. If you want good internet, asia is the place to go.
I'm on woosh and we seem to get capped to about 14k in the evenings, which is actually when I want to use the internet most to work with colleagues from the UK.
I'm a videographer, so I want a fast upload speed. And also I need to down and up over 80 gigs a month for archiving..that's not even including youtube, webcam, irc and other perfectly legitimate download uses.
It's as if the mentality is:
"Hey, I know everybody wants to use the internet most in the evening. But it's not fair for those people who only use the internet to load emails. So let's cap the people who use the internet so it frees it up for those who don't."
I'm fed up of having my evenings sabotaged. Bring on the loop unbundling and fibre optic network!
Posted by: Frances | August 14, 2007 8:23 PM
Dan wtf you on... Why whould we have to pay $1000 for 100GB? USA gets Cable TV phone and unlimited T1 internet for $40USD. they have so many more people then us so for that there I expect to pay no more than $200 a month. in NZ we pay $50 average phone $50 average net then say $70 for TV. practically $200 a month. we get average phone I suppose TV is full of repeats and crap. and net is capped at 10GB a month still with 4mb speeds if your lucky. AWSOME!
Posted by: Ply-Boy | May 2, 2007 3:49 PM
It's time for ISPs and telcos to stop making excuses. Elsewhere in the world people are getting 40GB a month at 8Mbit/sec for FREE, just by having a phone line with the ISP. How can NZ ISPs charge for just 10GB ? Broadband in NZ is a joke.
Posted by: Silver Surfer | April 27, 2007 5:33 PM
I feel like we've taken a step back I was happy with the current plan but shifting us back to 10gb a month for $50? come on! it should be at least 30gb u might as well drop it back down to 128/128 at this rate quicksliver used to be soo good till woosh took over what a joke
Posted by: James C | April 24, 2007 9:18 PM
Rob: as Dan pointed out, this is the ADSL service. You can get 20GB plans with the wireless service now.
Graham: it's not quite as straightforward as that - for most ISPs, DSL runs at a loss. Obviously, ISPs want more customers and one way to accomplish this is... to encourage greater use. This is where it becomes difficult on a shared-bandwidth medium where providers have little leverage over wholesale pricing.
Until Telecom, Singtel/Optus and MCI drop their international charges on the SCC substantially, this isn't going to change either.
Posted by: Juha | April 24, 2007 6:06 PM
Taking to rob,
This is wired broadband - ie quicksilver.
Posted by: Dan | April 24, 2007 5:11 PM
It's quite simple. If people want huge volumes of data, it's tecnically feasible.
The problem is that the majority of people don't seem to want to pay what it costs.
ISPs have to pay for the bandwidth they provide for their customers. The income from their customers covers their running costs, the bandwidth they purchase, and (presumably) some return to their shareholders. If it doesn't cover the costs, they go out of business. They are not charitable organisations.
Posted by: Graham Lees | April 24, 2007 4:02 PM
Wooshs wireless service uses a totally different network to telecoms wireed network. Does this mean that providing broadband in NZ with large caps is not affordable, and unbundling of telecoms network won't make any difference whatsoever to bandwidth and pricing. It may even put the price up.
Posted by: Rob | April 24, 2007 3:30 PM