Is Your Internet Service Provider Playing Dirty Games with Your Account?

It's no secret today that the communications industries are up to their proverbial eyeballs in filth and dirty politics. First we had wire tapping and now they want to start capping our Internet downloading access. I happen to use Cox Cable myself and seeing as how I pay $49.95 per month for Internet service, those neighbors of mine that pay for a lower tier of service should get just that; a lower tier. I don't see why I should be capped if I am paying through the nose for my connection.

Yes I want speed, and reliability and I want it NOW! It's pathetic that I am constantly being forced to reset my modem or renew my IP address because Cox has capped me right in to a corner. We play games, we have our Myspace and Facebook accounts, we check our email and we watch movies; by we I mean two of us in my home.

It's wonderful that Netflix is offering people the ability to further their laziness and simply connect their computer to their television set and watch movies that are streamed online; it's a service that is paid for so with Internet service providers capping their customers abilities to access such information this is not going to settle well with Netflix or other companies like them. iTunes and other sites that sell music downloads are also ultimately going to be affected as well so it's not only customers that Internet service providers are hurting but online business that are trying to make a profit.

Comcast, the nation's second largest Internet service provider, announced they are considering setting a cap on the amount of downloading that their customers can do. In the past any user that was found "hogging" resources, to the tune of more than 2 gigabytes per month, was threatened with having their account terminated if they didn't cut back on their usage. Time Warner Cable is also rolling out plans for capping customer's bandwidth usage and if it's exceeded, the customer will be charged additional fees. AT&T, another one of the communications giants, is also putting a vice grip on their so called bandwidth hogs.

I recently discovered that Cox, my ISP, has had caps in place for the past three years! They offer different tiers of service and the more you pay the "faster" your connection is supposed to be. If I am paying for "blazing fast speed" (the Premier with Power Boost package) then why should I give two shakes about my lowly neighbor that only pays $19.95 (the Economy Package) a month for a Cox cable connection? I should get what I pay for, end of story. After researching the terms of service on Cox's website I found that for the package I have the cap on uploading is 15 gigabytes per month and downloading is 60 gigabytes per month. I know about seven years ago when I was using my home computer as my radio station server Cox would change my IP address on an almost daily basis which was a cap in itself because I had to go back and change every link to my station daily; what a pain! I know for a fact that at that time, due to the lower quality MP3 streaming I was doing, I never reached that maximum upload. I have since started paying for web hosting and I run an online radio station as well as music based website. I have mixes sent to me by DJ's from around the world that I have to get uploaded to my server. So now I am paying $49.95 for my Internet connection and then an additional $65 a month for a grand total of $114.95 for me to just be able to run my websites and keep fresh mixes uploaded for our listeners. That's not even including what I am paying for domain names.

I don't make any money off what I do and it's painfully obvious that most Internet businesses that are involved in high volume uploads or downloads will suffer financially when the Internet service providers decide to pull the carpet out from under us. Directly from the Cox website, this is what they have to say about usage hogs; "You must comply with the current bandwidth, data storage, electronic mail and other Limitations of Service that correspond with the package of Service you selected. In addition to complying with the limitations for specific features, you must ensure that your activities do not improperly restrict, inhibit, or degrade any other user's use of the Service, nor represent (in Cox's sole judgment) an unusually great burden on the network itself. In addition, you must ensure that your use does not improperly restrict, inhibit, disrupt, degrade or impede Cox's ability to deliver the Service and monitor the Service, backbone, network nodes, and/or other network services. If you use excessive bandwidth (as determined by Cox), Cox may terminate, suspend, or require you to upgrade the Service and/or pay additional fees."

The bottom line....Read the fine print! Consumers need to take a stand against these shoddy conditions we are being held to and say enough is enough, I want what I pay for.