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New Enemy to MMOS- Internet Tiered Pricing
Lamarak
Member Posts: 61
Well all eyes are on Time warner and thier planned tiered pricing of the internet. Can read some of it here http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/mar2009/tc20090331_726397.htm. The more you use the more you can pay. And the other providers are going to be watching closely and see how many people react to this. If this has any kind of success i wouldnt be surpised to see other providers start to look at this. With the popluarity of streaming movies, TV, songs, and of course gaming, this can have alot of implications i the next year.
I really think unless the governmemt steps in soon, we all can see this type of pricing of monthly usage of the internet become the norm where you pay like 60 bucks for 40 gigs a month then 1 dollar per gig you go over.
So what do you think of this?
Comments
Believe it or not, this is not them after your money in particular... this is them after other company's money.
Things like "Hulu" or "ESPN360"... if they were a "Time Warner Affiliate", they would not go towards the bandwidth cap. They're looking for a cut of the profit of the websites, not neccessarily your wallet.
The problem being that Steam is not about to hop onboard this... IGN (Direct2Drive) might, but only because of their association in other arenas.
This is, personally, a strike against those of us who do alot of streaming video. I have a monitor that runs Hulu all day, or YouTube, or even ESPN360 (during Football Season). I have Concrap (Comcast), but I purchased an upgraded package so that I can avoid bandwidth caps.
in other news: this is also for the Business Connection... I work at a game company, if we can't transfer art and raw media, we will fold... and I personally don't want to pay for a T1. I will switch to a high end DSL line before I start paying overage charges this absurd.
- CaesarsGhost
Lead Gameplay and Gameworld Designer for a yet unnamed MMO Title.
"When people tell me designing a game is easy, I try to get them to design a board game. Most people don't last 5 minutes, the rest rarely last more then a day. The final few realize it's neither fun nor easy."
If my cable company does it I will just cancel the cable to pay for it. I never watch tv, anyways.
Better yet, I will cancel both, and connect my PC to my iphone's internet that has a flat rate.
First off, I could see this easily backlashing in Ted Turners face. As, in fact, many of his "greed schemes" have before ( AOL being a good example )..
On the outside chance that he does manage to be successful enough with it for others to do the same, then i believe you will get your wish for government to step in.
For one thing, our new president is "one of us", so to speak. He likes his Blackberry and his Ipod. He enjoys playing his Wii. He is technologically savvy. And he seems to have a desire to make things equal for the "little guy" to keep up.
I could very much see Obama taking something like this on. Especially with the past and current issues with companies like Comcast with their monopoly pricing ( look at prices in an area where Comcast is the only provider compared to where they have to share the market ), misleading service contracts and shoddy customer treatment. What we need is someone to bring this stuff to the forefront, instead of it being frontpage news for a day or two, then getting relegated to the back page, if covered at all.
It's not gaming that they're going after. It's people downloading lots of TV shows and movies that are using up huge amounts of bandwidth. Most games don't use huge amounts of bandwidth, in part because it's cheaper for the game companies to build games to use less bandwidth and reduce their own costs, and in part to make the game at least marginally playable on a 56K connection.
If you play a game for 5 hours per day and use 100 Kbps of bandwidth on average while playing the game, that comes to 7 GB per month. Someone who leaves the computer running overnight to download the equivalent of one movie at DVD quality might use that in a single night--and then do it again the next night, and the night after, and the night after that. That's what they're trying to put a stop to.
aint gona read whole story, but limited download size been sine internet was found..
you have whatnot xxx gb per month and have to pay for extra.. poor Australians have only that as i heard.. me in europe.. i can use it as much as i want.. and ill never get connection with limits.. ( well unless i live somehwere remote, and thats only choice )
unless thats something different.. when china launches new wireless network.. giving everyone 3tb or whatnot speed
we go WOW , and then in another cauntry of failures.. ( im European.. you know i gotta hate usa and stuff ) you get some shitty stuff like this..
whos going to new age.. whos turning around.. and walking backwards back to dark ages..
The only way to actually lose all your alloted bandwidth is by downloading large files - a game client per day or daily movies and tv shows.
I browse a lot, and I do play games on the occassion and it is rare to hit above 30Gb. Anything else that goes above that would be the "once in a while" client download, big patch, or some HD video or podcast.
It isn't really much of a problem unless the limit is unreasonable. I have 60Gbs per month with a 7mbps rate. I pay around 50-60$ a months - it keeps fluctuating usually going up. That seems like a reasonable price since I do spend most of my computer time online. 40Gb/month is a little tight and anything lower is outrageous considering how much some websites weight - to the point that you can't even use youtube as a TV if it goes lower.
what about people like me, that live in a house with 4 computers all gaming?
When I emigrated to N.America from the UK I couldn't believe how lucky the continent is with internet speeds and caps not to mention pricing.
I as so impressed that I went and got my first job with my ISP who just happens to do the fastest DL speed in N America :P
Be careful what you wish for. If the government steps in and says that companies can't charge more for people who use more bandwidth, they'll have to resort to other means to cut costs--perhaps cancelling accounts entirely or choking down bandwidth. If the government says they can't target particular customers, they'll just raise prices or reduce bandwidth for everyone.
I want to comment on this, as someone managing a small ISP.
First, I'll say that this won't hurt MMO players at all. MMO gamers are one of my favorite types of subscribers. The games generate very low throughput and don't really require the super low pings people need top play FPS games.
The customers who are a problem are the ones who run P2P software 24/7. They are sucking down bandwidth you pay for. Those types of subscribers on my network only make up about 20%, but they easily account for 80% of the total data passed. Video games, internet surfing, watching videos on youtube or even downloading from itunes or netfix aren't a problem. It's all the P2P abusers this is aimed at.
lately, there have been a lot of technologies popping up that don't amount to much more than someone selling the use of my service, with no compensation to me. Vonage is the biggest example. They get you to drop your phone connection and use your ISP's bandwidth for your phone service. Of course it's cheaper, they don't pay the ISPs anything for it. Then you have remote data back-up services. Like this even makes sense. Just buy an external drive if you are worried about your data being lost... but I am getting away from my point... Unless you are a heavy P2P user, you will probably find that you fall in to one of the lower tiers of service.
-----Zero Punctuation Eve Online Review-----
All I see from companys doing this is that people will stop paying them and switch to other providers that wont charge them more. This will not be successful except in places where there is only one provider. I've been using ATT and we have unlim cap with no extra charges. If they happened to add on extra prices and caps, I'll just as easily switch to any one of the other major providers in my area. It's the perks of living in big cities in Cali
Drackarre-A new medieval fantasy sandbox mmorpg in development by Bungaboo.
Yep there would be other options and these providers that go this route would lose alot of customers......
I think people freak out a bit when they hear they are being capped. I use Charter Communications and they just implemented the cap... the lowest cap they have is 100GB per month. Which in all honesty isn't that bad.
Below is the policy. (I cut this section out)
"13. NO EXCESSIVE USE OF BANDWIDTH
Excessive bandwidth is usage beyond a reasonable level for the service subscribed to. Residential service usage will not exceed 100GB of bandwidth per month for Customers subscribing to Services of 15 Mbps or less per month and 250GB of bandwidth per month for Customers subscribing to Service over 15 Mbps and up to 25 Mbps...."
I have two computers and a Wii that I run off the internet. I do a fair amount of gaming, downloading and streaming and I've yet to come close.
If you're using that much in one month then I can see why companies would view it as excessive - and if you're using it for business reasons then a business package should be used.
https://www.youtube.com/user/NemsGaming
Thank you for an insightful answer. Alot of good information there but the one thing you didnt address is the streaming and downloading of movies and heck even games. These on top of regular gaming can easily take even a casual user over the limit if arounf 40 gigs. This can hurt companies that want to sell thier games just online as direct downloads, and more and more people are using the internet to watch TV which is making cable mad because this lets some people cut down if not just quit thier service all together.
I think this is where Time warner is really getting mad at people using the internet to watch tv and not pay them. I 'm just guessing here though.
The cap for usage through charter is in a testing phase at the moment. Right now they are doing line tests to see how many people will go over this cap. So in essence, it's in place, but you will not get charged by going over, atleast not yet. By the end of the year they will announce if they will be sticking with this plan and will start charging people if they do. This was posted by a representitive of Charter on dslreports forums, but the post got removed because people can't handle themselves.
Also wanted to add that AT&T and Verizon are rolling out fiber to eleviate bandwith issues and not have to place caps on lines. So if you can get either Verizon or U-verse(AT&T), get them. I have U-verse, and it's simply amazing.
I think this pricing system is ridiculous. If I'm already paying TWC money isn't that good enough? Why do they have to squeeze more money out of us? I can't even believe the bull**** reason that the TWC spokesman gave about "improving their hardware for the average user". They just want more profit! And right now they're not getting anything for heavy users. So what's the incentive for them not to do a tiered pricing? I hate TWC..
And sign this petition to give them a piece of our mind!
http://www.petitiononline.com/UHSICP01/petition.html
Yeah I'm running the ATT fiber lines and they are amazing. The first day I saw my speeds after they changed out local lines my mouth dropped and I started calling my friends with comcast(cable) and laughed that I had more speed than the one he was paying for(and paying more).
That's all that is going to happen to. They put in a cap, and everyone will switch somewhere else like ATT where you never have to worry about it. They will make even less money as a result =P
Drackarre-A new medieval fantasy sandbox mmorpg in development by Bungaboo.
Suppose that you're running a company and you charge all of your customers $40/month. Some of your customers cost you $10/month, so you're making good money on them. Others cost you $100/month, so you're losing quite a bit of money on them. (I realize that business expenses are more complicated than that, so that putting a precise figure on what each customer costs you in taxes, overhead, wages, paperwork, etc. is rather dubious, but bear with me here.) What are you going to do about it?
Most likely you don't want to just keep losing money on some of the customers forever. Either you raise prices on them, make changes to limit how much they can cost you, or stop working for them entirely.
Now suppose that you're making money on most of your customers but only losing money on a tiny fraction, but losing quite a lot on that tiny fraction. If you can make changes to your business model that 95% of your customers will never notice, but make you stop losing money on 5% of them, you'd seriously consider it, wouldn't you?
Actually, I think the key to getting public acceptance of this is to make the changes not merely provide a worse deal for the tiny fraction of customers you're losing money on, but also provide a better deal for those you're making good money on. This could be either a small price cut for those who don't use much bandwidth, have the changes coincide with the introduction of faster downloading speeds, or some other thing to make most customers think this is a good change. You don't want most of your customers to sympathize with those who are running into the throughput caps and thinking "that could be me; maybe they'll come for me next".
Yep, 6mb AT&T is what I have. Been with SBC/ATT from the beginning. Love having no caps and no throttling, which is why I'd rather "suffer" with 6mb rather than have 12-18mb Comcast with hidden caps and throttling of bandwidth when they decide you're "using too much".
Soon as AT&T gets the fiber up and running, i'll switch to that.
The problem I see with things is if they become 'traditional'. Traditional, in the sense, they don't change when bandwidths no longer become a big problem. For example, right now, I could see these schemes improving the service overall and I can see why companies may want to 'throttle' certain customers. However, bandwidth is theoritically limited only by the technology that accesses it.
Having said that, it could get to the point where it's like a buncha water thugs fencing off a lake and allowing only one fountain for an entire city to access water from that lack when the lake could simply be opened up. It goes beyond trying to make money and not lose money, to simply being greedy. It'd almost be like charging for air.
The problem is where do you put your foot down? It might be good now but in a few years when technology improves to the point where you can have unlimited bandwidth, in theory, becuase it'd be nearly impossible for an average consumer to reach it anyways?
The point is, if you let them quarter off the supply they are going to continue to do so, even if the supply becomes unlimited. It's in their best interest to do it.
splat
Most European ISPs already operate similiar systems to this, it's only impact on gaming might be that ISPs in America start to packet shape, limited bandwidth for some ports than others.
Its pretty common in Europe for streaming and browsing to have a higher priority than gaming data.
Hah, it's bene like that in Europe for years now. But seriously, if you download more than 40 gigs in 1 month, I doubt that will all be legal. Be glad you're not getting a system like in france! First time you exceed your limit, you get a warning, second time, you have no internet for 1 year, third = no internet at all.
You know it, the best way to realize your dreams is waking up and start moving, never lose hope and always keep up.
???? that sounds just great!
Playing polished, lag free, feature complete games is carebear. Whining about a game you hate but still play is hardcore man!
If people sit by and take it they deserve it.
Basically what this boils down to is, companies wanting to charge more for absolutly nothing. I currently use 900+gb of bandwidth a month Teired pricing could be ridiculous. The internet is the future, these ISP need to learn how to keep up.
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