I had Crapcast for awhile before fiber became available, I regularly use terabytes of data and their 1TB cap would be blown through in no time.
If data caps actually solved a problem like it does for cellular networks, it’d be different. But it’s not, it’s a cash grab, I “just” had to pay Crapcast an extra 20$/month
You see, for cellular, a tower is truly limited on the bandwidth because it must be shared among all cellular devices connected to it. And that could be thousands upon thousands of individual devices.
But for hardline, the ISP builds a trunk to the neighborhood and they build it to spec assuming they would sign up a certain percentage (Probably like 80%, or more if they know they’re going to be the only service for a while) to their highest tier. If their highest tier is 1Gbps, then they build their trunk line to that neighborhood to handle 80% of the houses having 1Gbps service.
They never get close to that percentage in the real world, most people are going to stick with some middle of the road package or slower. But, the trunk was built to handle 80% of the houses being active 24/7 at 1Gbps, which just doesn’t happen in the real world so a LOT of that capacity remains just at the ready.
Now that’s just bandwidth, has nothing to do with the amount of data transferred, that line to your house is built to handle whatever the ISPs highest package is or planned higher, whether you use 1Gbps to transfer 1 GB of data or 1000 it doesn’t matter
That’s still a limitation on bandwidth, not data volume. It’s still the bandwidth that costs money, not the volume.
Not really. OFDMA and other modulation mechanisms for doing dense wireless connectivity do have limitations on number of active connections based on frequency (not necessarily data bandwidth) available. Someone communicating constantly will eat up way more slots than their neighbors. https://www.5gtechnologyworld.com/the-basics-of-5gs-modulation-ofdm/
Wireless is a shared resource that cannot be guarded. This is not the case with cables… Where that bandwidth limitation is never encroached upon (short of the North American Fiber-Seeking Backhoe… Shown here:)
In short, someone taking less slots means that service for everyone is better. A cap can keep those slots open as people would be incentivized to use it less.
The alternative is that they install more wireless transmitters but dial the power down so there’s more cells. Except this will have alternative problems in penetrating into buildings and such. So that’s not really an answer either. And with way more hand-offs you’ll run into more problems using your cellphone anyway.
I had Crapcast for awhile before fiber became available, I regularly use terabytes of data and their 1TB cap would be blown through in no time.
If data caps actually solved a problem like it does for cellular networks, it’d be different. But it’s not, it’s a cash grab, I “just” had to pay Crapcast an extra 20$/month
You see, for cellular, a tower is truly limited on the bandwidth because it must be shared among all cellular devices connected to it. And that could be thousands upon thousands of individual devices.
But for hardline, the ISP builds a trunk to the neighborhood and they build it to spec assuming they would sign up a certain percentage (Probably like 80%, or more if they know they’re going to be the only service for a while) to their highest tier. If their highest tier is 1Gbps, then they build their trunk line to that neighborhood to handle 80% of the houses having 1Gbps service.
They never get close to that percentage in the real world, most people are going to stick with some middle of the road package or slower. But, the trunk was built to handle 80% of the houses being active 24/7 at 1Gbps, which just doesn’t happen in the real world so a LOT of that capacity remains just at the ready.
Now that’s just bandwidth, has nothing to do with the amount of data transferred, that line to your house is built to handle whatever the ISPs highest package is or planned higher, whether you use 1Gbps to transfer 1 GB of data or 1000 it doesn’t matter
Removed by mod
Not really. OFDMA and other modulation mechanisms for doing dense wireless connectivity do have limitations on number of active connections based on frequency (not necessarily data bandwidth) available. Someone communicating constantly will eat up way more slots than their neighbors.
https://www.5gtechnologyworld.com/the-basics-of-5gs-modulation-ofdm/
Wireless is a shared resource that cannot be guarded. This is not the case with cables… Where that bandwidth limitation is never encroached upon (short of the North American Fiber-Seeking Backhoe… Shown here:)
In short, someone taking less slots means that service for everyone is better. A cap can keep those slots open as people would be incentivized to use it less.
The alternative is that they install more wireless transmitters but dial the power down so there’s more cells. Except this will have alternative problems in penetrating into buildings and such. So that’s not really an answer either. And with way more hand-offs you’ll run into more problems using your cellphone anyway.