[Updated] Verizon Scolds FiOS User for Consuming 7 TB Every Month

[pit5000]

Google Fiber needs global rollout NOW!

[CommanderRykerHaunSolo]

sad, his internet will be cut out on my birthday. Just send your titan x, i mean b day present, now i guess.

[Guest]

and also at your macbook

Always.

[monsieurgoat]

This user should just rent a cabinet in a datacenter. The electricity and bandwidth will be much cheaper. 

[Rohith_Kumar_Sp]

Is an acceptable usage threshold present in the user's contract (I assume there is one) with Verizon, not the letter? If so, is he going over it? If so, he's at fault. If not, Verizon are being asinine.

[skullrebell]

Burlington, Vermont.

yeah you dont have a data cap, i work in your region and handle accounts for burlington all day, 

[Guest]

yeah you dont have a data cap, i work in your region and handle accounts for burlington all day, 

We've gotten notices though...

 

If you work for them, tell them to stop charging for 25 down and giving us 15 down on a good day

[GeTecknics]

Atleast they let him use 7tb a month for a while i go over 250gb and i get an angry call from my isp saying dont do it 

[Takata]

Data caps are not a real thing, they're an arbitrary line in the sand, drawn by a company that want's to charge you out the ass, nothing more.

Hm? Data caps are a valid way of charging customers based on how much they use. The user using 1TB is costing the ISP more than the user using 100GB, so the 1TB user should pay more. Not 10x more due to economies of scale, but noticeably more.

 

 

As much as I hate most American ISP's for being complete douche bags I am inclined to agree with Verizon on this one. 7TB is insane, fair enough hes paying for 500Mb speeds but 7TB's of usage is insane, if he wants to use that he needs to get a business line and pay a proper premium instead of saturating a consumer network. That kind of usage can impact other peoples ability to use the internet.

The "7TB is insane" argument assumes that someone buys a 500Mb/s connection to transfer a bit more data in a much shorter amount of time, as opposed to transferring a lot more data in a slightly shorter amount of time. This assumption feels a little unreasonable.

The "business" internet plan probably costs more, while not offering anything over the "consumer" plan that this user actually wants. (Well... at least in theory. In reality, the business plan would probably come without excessive usage notices.)

[Kingofpants]

Hm? Data caps are a valid way of charging customers based on how much they use. The user using 1TB is costing the ISP more than the user using 100GB, so the 1TB user should pay more. Not 10x more due to economies of scale, but noticeably more.

 

 

The "7TB is insane" argument assumes that someone buys a 500Mb/s connection to transfer a bit more data in a much shorter amount of time, as opposed to transferring a lot more data in a slightly shorter amount of time. This assumption feels a little unreasonable.

The "business" internet plan probably costs more, while not offering anything over the "consumer" plan that this user actually wants. (Well... at least in theory. In reality, the business plan would probably come without excessive usage notices.)

Exactly , It is breach of TOS to use a 500Mb/s home connection so heavily , they are meant to be fast when needed not run 24/7 and slow down the neighborhood. 

But if he bought a Business plan with unlimited then I would think Verizon would be wrong in giving him a Warning.

[Biased Opinion]

Meanwhile Optus Australia don't care if you munch 23TB on cable.

Im currently on optus cable with 30 down. The most i have managed in a month is 1.2TB, no idea how you would manage to burn through 23TB in a month. Maybe i just need to seed more shit.

[zacRupnow]

we have gigbit speeds, only a data cap in 2 areas Maine and Nashville,Tn, i am a customer service agent for them and am a real person, and their is a dedicated cancelation department, with the hours of 830pm-630pm m-sat.

You sell Gigabit speeds throttled down based on data usage and the type of content the user consumes, the cancellation department employees are retention agents, you can cancel but it will take a court order to be successful because employees are trained to avoid the cancellation process by verbally abusing customers and continuously asking why the customer wants to cancel their contracts with the "best provider" in the country. 

[Mew]

You sell Gigabit speeds throttled down based on data usage and the type of content the user consumes, the cancellation department employees are retention agents, you can cancel but it will take a court order to be successful because employees are trained to avoid the cancellation process by verbally abusing customers and continuously asking why the customer wants to cancel their contracts with the "best provider" in the country. 

 

Not only that, they also increase prices on existing customers and give new customers lower "introductory" prices so that there are no incentives for existing customers to stay. 

[RuecanOnRails]

Exactly , It is breach of TOS to use a 500Mb/s home connection so heavily , they are meant to be fast when needed not run 24/7 and slow down the neighborhood. 

But if he bought a Business plan with unlimited then I would think Verizon would be wrong in giving him a Warning.

 

Funny, I didn't realize using less than 2.5% of network capabilities would be considered "heavily" used. It should not be possible to hit an arbitrary ceiling/data cap with less than 24 hours of full speed use. With both upload and download hitting their respective max of 500/500, you would expect a single hour to equal 450GB, exceeding the 7TB threshold in a modest 15.5 hours.

 

My personal opinion on data caps is that they should be set no less than the equivalent of running 6 days max speed up/down. That still only gives the user a max of 20% full usage but at least it's better than what we currently see today.

 

"If you break it down it accounts to a single ~24 hours of usage at the full 500Mbps, or 20Mbps for a continuous 30 days," argues the user. "My usage is irregular and usually spikes up and down and sometimes the connection will sit idle for a day or two at a time. It makes me curious why 500Mbps is even offered if just using a whopping four percent of that connection is prohibited."

[Takata]

Exactly , It is breach of TOS to use a 500Mb/s home connection so heavily , they are meant to be fast when needed not run 24/7 and slow down the neighborhood. 

But if he bought a Business plan with unlimited then I would think Verizon would be wrong in giving him a Warning.

7TB per month amounts to about 4% utilisation (or 2% utilisation if you consider that the connection is 500Mb/s in both directions). I just... don't feel that this is "excessive", since my internet connection is probably going to be utilised about that much too. That said, my internet speed is roughly 10/1, so it's not the fairest comparison.

 

If Verizon is getting hurt by the spikes in this person's usage, maybe they should consider daily or half-daily data caps instead of monthly data caps. ?

[Agent181]

im still surprised tmobile hasnt sent me something like that used 40 gb in 1 day last week

[NateGSR117]

Them villains! Let the person live his fairytale fantasy!

[RH00D]

As much as I hate most American ISP's for being complete douche bags I am inclined to agree with Verizon on this one. 7TB is insane, fair enough hes paying for 500Mb speeds but 7TB's of usage is insane, if he wants to use that he needs to get a business line and pay a proper premium instead of saturating a consumer network. That kind of usage can impact other peoples ability to use the internet.

 

I am a heavy user and I use nowhere near even 1TB a month. Although what do I know I can't see a meter of my usage. I use my internet for YouTube, Netflix, Gaming, Steam... Downloading the odd Movie/Album every so often. 

 

Here's a question for you. If Verizon can't handle a 500 Megabit connection on their "consumer" network then WHY ARE THEY OFFERING IT IN THE FIRST PLACE? Never mind the fact that "consumer" and "business" connections use the exact same copper and fiber lines.

 

Why would they sell a 500 Megabit connection to this man then say "Don't ever try using more than 20 Megabits".

 

Verizon did not sell him a "500 Megabit for 2 hours of the day" connection. They sold him a 500 Megabit 24/7 connection. But lets not forget that on average he was only ever using 20 Megabits 24/7. A mere 4% of the 500 Megabit capacity.

 

500 Megabits * 24 hours * 30 days = 162 Terabytes. If Verizon cannot handle a person using 162 Terabytes per month then they should NOT be selling that offer. Keeping in mind the fellow here was only at 7 TB, not even close to 162.

 

There is no justification to say "We are selling you X, you are paying for 100% of X, but if you ever try to use more than 4% of X we are going to cancel X". That is false advertising and fraud and that is exactly what is happening here.

[Sakkura]

@RH00D, internet providers oversubscribe. An actual 10 Gbps connection will be split between people with aggregate connection speeds of 100 Gbps or more. That works because people don't all use their connections simultaneously, and it allows people to get their connections for a much lower cost than if the ISP was matching the aggregate rated connection speeds in each area.

 

However, oversubscribing shouldn't be overdone. Punishing someone that uses 2% or 4% of their rated connection speed is a bit iffy. Punishing someone using eg. 50% of their rated connection speed would be reasonable, at least if the ISP isn't promising an uncapped connection.

[linuxfan66]

@RH00D, internet providers oversubscribe. An actual 10 Gbps connection will be split between people with aggregate connection speeds of 100 Gbps or more. That works because people don't all use their connections simultaneously, and it allows people to get their connections for a much lower cost than if the ISP was matching the aggregate rated connection speeds in each area.

 

However, oversubscribing shouldn't be overdone. Punishing someone that uses 2% or 4% of their rated connection speed is a bit iffy. Punishing someone using eg. 50% of their rated connection speed would be reasonable, at least if the ISP isn't promising an uncapped connection.

fun way of doing that...still shoddy outside of cable(where the technology requires it)

[Mew]

Original post updated with Verizon's actual data cap. (10Tb)

[Kingofpants]

Here's a question for you. If Verizon can't handle a 500 Megabit connection on their "consumer" network then WHY ARE THEY OFFERING IT IN THE FIRST PLACE? Never mind the fact that "consumer" and "business" connections use the exact same copper and fiber lines.

Why would they sell a 500 Megabit connection to this man then say "Don't ever try using more than 20 Megabits".

Verizon did not sell him a "500 Megabit for 2 hours of the day" connection. They sold him a 500 Megabit 24/7 connection. But lets not forget that on average he was only ever using 20 Megabits 24/7. A mere 4% of the 500 Megabit capacity.

500 Megabits * 24 hours * 30 days = 162 Terabytes. If Verizon cannot handle a person using 162 Terabytes per month then they should NOT be selling that offer. Keeping in mind the fellow here was only at 7 TB, not even close to 162.

There is no justification to say "We are selling you X, you are paying for 100% of X, but if you ever try to use more than 4% of X we are going to cancel X". That is false advertising and fraud and that is exactly what is happening here.

Don't be so dense, its not fraud as X is a speed not a capacity.

And your idea of making it so you can use 100% of a connections 24/7 is a stupid one.

The reasoning behind this is because Worldwide cables only have a certain capacity and if every single person was given a share it would be less than 1 mbps of Dedicated capacity and to get more you would need to buy another share. To get even a 25 Mmps connection would be expensive as all hell, and in the end only about 10% of it will be active at once, a horrendice waste of bandwidth.

That would be expensive and bad for everyone. Instead what we do is have ISPs buy a bunch of shares and Pool them amoung people. So while Im not using my connection my neighbor can use my share and enjoy higher speeds and in return I can do the same.

[Trik'Stari]

I think Logan put it best.

[RH00D]

Don't be so dense, its not fraud as X is a speed not a capacity.

And your idea of making it so you can use 100% of a connections 24/7 is a stupid one.

The reasoning behind this is because Worldwide cables only have a certain capacity and if every single person was given a share it would be less than 1 mbps of Dedicated capacity and to get more you would need to buy another share. To get even a 25 Mmps connection would be expensive as all hell, and in the end only about 3% of it will be active at once, a horrendice waste of bandwidth.

That would be expensive and bad for everyone. Instead what we do is have ISPs buy a bunch of shares and Pool them amoung people. So while Im not using my connection my neighbor can use my share and enjoy higher speeds and in return I can do the same.

 

Internet "speeds" ARE capacity. Ping is speed.

 

I never said everyone should be able to use 100% of their speed at once. Stop making things up.

 

It is a fact that most people are never using their connections to capacity which is exactly why it should be no problem when the one-off individual is.

 

The very fact that going to a "business plan" would alleviate any "problems" is in fact an admission that there is absolutely nothing wrong with the infrastructure in the first place and that the problem is purely artificial. Because the ONLY thing that changes by switching to a business plan is the amount of money he's paying. Nothing else.

 

Further more, he was only ever using 4% of what he is paying for. I am dying to hear how using 4% of of what he is paying for is "excessive".

[Dabombinable]

The very fact that going to a "business plan" would alleviate any "problems" is in fact an admission that there is absolutely nothing wrong with the infrastructure in the first place and that the problem is purely artificial. Because the ONLY thing that changes by switching to a business plan is the amount of money he's paying. Nothing else.

That's actually some very nice ammo against Verizon.