{"id":17021,"date":"2012-09-22T09:13:11","date_gmt":"2012-09-22T14:13:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=17021"},"modified":"2012-09-22T09:13:11","modified_gmt":"2012-09-22T14:13:11","slug":"the-joy-of-data-capped-throttled-internet-access","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2012\/09\/22\/the-joy-of-data-capped-throttled-internet-access\/","title":{"rendered":"The &#8220;joy&#8221; of data-capped, throttled internet access"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/massively.joystiq.com\/2012\/09\/21\/mmobility-data-caps-throttled-signals-and-blocked-sites\/\" target=\"_blank\">Welcome to Canada<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Blogger <a href=\"https:\/\/plus.google.com\/u\/0\/101848509345653775667\/posts\" target=\"_blank\">Stephanie Morrow<\/a> has complained about data caps in Canada for a while now. The details of her situation show just how hard it can be to get faster internet even if you are willing to pay for it:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<p><em>My monthly data cap at the moment is 80 gigs. I pay just over $100 CA for 80 gigs a month, and $2 CA per gig over my cap. Understandably, 80 gigs is not that much, especially if you play multiple games or download a lot of games on Steam, watch Netflix, have a PlayStation 3, Xbox, 3DS, iPad or iPhone like we do. Sadly, there are not a lot of other options. We have two major ISP companies in the city that work this way (there&#8217;s no such thing as unlimited here in Canada from these two ISPs), and then there are a handful of smaller ISPs that do offer unlimited but at a greatly reduced speed.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>So, I had to make the sacrifice. Did I want an unlimited cap when I&#8217;d barely able to download anything because it would take weeks and weeks, or did I want a cap and be able to download at the speed of light? The cap is a harsh mistress, not to mention that everything peer-to-peer gets throttled. That means no free-to-play games for me because they typically download via a peer-to-peer method that gets throttled. I was unable to do my job while using internet from Rogers, one of the major companies here. I had no choice but to switch to a smaller company or give up my job. I wrote to the companies about this situation but didn&#8217;t hear anything back.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/ul>\n<p>That&#8217;s a pretty amazing story. I remember the speeds I got when I used another cable company, and I remember just how bad it felt to have to set a game to download overnight. Stephanie goes on to update the situation on her <a href=\"https:\/\/plus.google.com\/u\/0\/101848509345653775667\/posts\" target=\"_blank\">Google + blog<\/a>, noting that the company she is with is one of the worst throttlers in the country. She quotes <a href=\"http:\/\/www.techvibes.com\/blog\/canadas-broadband-caps-almost-a-human-rights-violation-says-netflix-exec-2012-09-16\" target=\"_blank\"><em>TechVibes<\/em><\/a>:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<p><em>In 2010, Shaw throttled 14% of users and Bell throttled 16% of users. Rogers? The Toronto-based telco throttled a startling 78% of users, and this number has surpassed 90% during some quarters since 2008.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Again, it can be hard for many of us to imagine having such a limited connection, but I hear from players all the time who have such issues. Is internet access a human right, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wired.com\/threatlevel\/2011\/06\/internet-a-human-right\/\" target=\"_blank\">as declared by the United Nations<\/a>? Do players have a right to the internet, even if they are using the connection mainly for gaming? I&#8217;d have to say yes simply because there are so many common advantages that come with internet access, access that provides information not only about one&#8217;s social network but local weather problems, health issues&#8230; the list goes on and on. The internet is now so much a part of our lives that we forget just how much we need it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>It&#8217;s a very rare month that I don&#8217;t get a bandwidth warning from Rogers&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Welcome to Canada: Blogger Stephanie Morrow has complained about data caps in Canada for a while now. The details of her situation show just how hard it can be to get faster internet even if you are willing to pay for it: My monthly data cap at the moment is 80 gigs. I pay just [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[831,6,15],"tags":[484,58,661,217],"class_list":["post-17021","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","category-cancon","category-technology","tag-competition","tag-internet","tag-regulation","tag-rights"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-4qx","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17021","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17021"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17021\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17023,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17021\/revisions\/17023"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17021"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17021"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17021"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}