NTM, net usage and bandwidth caps.

[GreyGeek]

In another thread someone mentioned using NTM (Network Traffic Monitor)to monitor one's total Internet usage for a given period of time, usually one month.

I ran it for 8 hours yesterday just to get an idea of how much my traffic is. Over those eight hours it averaged out to 92.3 Mb/hour. Based on how I use the web it would take me 9 days to reach the 10Gb limit that Verizon charges $80 for. Even worse, StraightTalk's $45/month "unlimited" calls, emails, texting and data plan (which by all accounts is throttled to dialup speeds after 2.5Gb is consumed) would last me less than 2 days!

Supposedly, Sprint claims that they offer true unlimited plans. A family plan (two phones) would cost me $189/month. For that I could surf, email, watch online TV or movies, nation wide calls, chat or text to my heart's desire on a 5Mb/s bandwidth. If I lived in France I could get all of that at 40Mb/s for $30/month. It just goes to show you what happens when the providers collude and the FCC becomes their sock puppet.

[whatthefunk]

10 gb limit?? Thats crazy. My limit is 30gb per day, which I think is reasonable. I only exceeded it once when I took the ratio limits off my ktorrent and left my computer running all day.

[GreyGeek]

Verizon and many other smartphone ISP's offer a data plan which is $80/month for 10Gb/month, with an additional charge of $10/Gb for every Gb over the 80Gb within the month. It is insane, but that's the nature of our telecom/cable industry in the USA.
How the whole sordid mess arose is explained here.

I still have a vivid memory of that mess. Here in Lincoln the city fathers got tired of begging the cable and telcos to install fiber optic cable through out the city, so they began doing it themselves. I watched as they buried a cable in my front yard to my access pedestal. I couldn't wait to get for the Copper coax to be disconnected and the glass to be hooked up. Then, TWC and the phone companies whined about "unfair competition". It's been about 15 years. The FOC has remained dark. it's probably still good, but as long as the cable and telcos can extort premium rents on Copper wire (with no additional infrastructure investment) they will. The problem is that as America's Dollar continues to erode in value there won't be money in the future to pay for lighting up the FOC. Things will really get bad when the Dollar looses its World Currency Status by the end of this year, if not sooner.

[whatthefunk]

That sucks. I live in Japan and the telecom companies are currently expanding their fiber optic networks. Theyre doing it in a pretty good way I think....they do one neighborhood at a time and then offer free installation in that neighborhood as long as you sign a long term contract. My contract is for two years (really not long at all) and costs me about $50 a month. Well worth it.