Cable Company charging by bandwidth. Will it affect Vonage?

Posts: 249

My local cable company Bend Broadband just announced that effective 1 July they will commence pricing Internet by bandwidth tiers. The least is $36.95 for a 10 Gig monthly use. Other tiers are 30, 50, & 100 Gig. I have no idea what I am using or how much Vonage consumes?

Anybody have any idea how to meter this? This is rather a new concept to me. Do other providers do this?

Thanks,
Snipe

Posts: 323 · Vonage Forum Evangelist Joined: Jan 29, 2006 Posts: 323

This is something that some ISPs are doing now. Most of what I have heard on this is in Canada. This is a battle about people who download torrents/music, etc.

Vonage uses 90kbps, both upstream and downstream when a call is in progress. On the whole this is a fairly small amount of bandwidth.

You can use this to calculate how much Vonage will use by itself.

I use a router with the Tomato firmware on it and this does bandwidth usage on it.

You could also help to address this by using the bandwidth saver feature on your Vonage account. There are three options you can use, 90, 50 or 30.

Posts: 86 · Vonage Forum Senior Joined: Mar 29, 2008 Posts: 86

at 90kbps, each hour is roughly 40mb.

let's say you talk for one hour every single day,
in a month, that's only 1.2GB....

...assuming I correctly used this calculator: Smile

http://web.forret.com/tools/filesize.asp?speed=90&unit=Kbps&dur=3600

Posts: 1327 · Vonage Forum **MVM** Joined: Nov 08, 2006 Posts: 1327

I am in Canada and I pay around $49 a month for my cable internet for 60 gigs. With 10 mbps download speed.

I download lots of torrents and use Vonage a lot. I don't usually go over my limit, which I can check on line at anytime.

I guess it depends what else you do with your internet besides using Vonage.

I would call your internet provider and ask them how you can check what you are using.

Posts: 4777 · Vonage Forum **MVM** Joined: Aug 30, 2005 Posts: 4777

kiersten wrote:

at 90kbps, each hour is roughly 40mb.

let's say you talk for one hour every single day,
in a month, that's only 1.2GB....

...assuming I correctly used this calculator: Smile

Sound right, but you also need to add the fact that the Vonage box "calls home" periodically when idle. Still, I don't think that's going to run the total up enough to be a problem.

Posts: 249 · Posted: Fri Apr 18, 2008 1:21 pm Post subject: Bandwidth

According to my ISP my billing cycle runs from the 26th to the 26th and I have used 4.5 Gigs as of this morning. That would be 23 days worth.

I am a webmaster for several non-profit web sites. I upload a 4 meg access database to one site daily via FTP. I back up several sites weekly. I also spend several hours a day updating them. It appears that I may be able to just make the 10 gig tier.

Since I do this as a hobby I have never asked the groups for more them my cost for the web hosting. It also appears that Vonage is not a serious factor.

I'll post my actual bandwidth on the 26th.
Here is a link to Bend Broadband's pricing.. http://bendbroadband.com/residentialservices_08.cfm

Posts: 433 · Posted: Fri Apr 18, 2008 5:37 pm Post subject:

Wow! I really hope this isn't the wave of the future!!! Per byte billing is a horrible idea. It's like per minute dial up except you can transfer information faster!!! That died a long time ago. I understand the argument of the other side. Why should a moderate user have to subsidize the bandwidth hogs? I just don't think it's the answer though. My opinion.

Posts: 830 · Vonage Forum Evangelist Joined: Jun 08, 2007 Posts: 830

tglea wrote:

I understand the argument of the other side. Why should a moderate user have to subsidize the bandwidth hogs?

The argument about the bandwidth hogs is valid as long as the ISP gurantees one the throughput he or she is paying for. If the ISP is going to charge extra for bandwidth, they have to guarantee speeds to everyone, since they are collecting extra to "assure" those speeds. IMHO

Currently my ISP says "up to 5mps" though I acutually get around 6 mps. If I get 3mps, they will try to troubleshoot, but no guarantee.

Time Warner Cable wrote:

Actual speeds may vary. . .
*Triple the speed of DSL claim is based on Road Runner's standard maximum download speed of 5.0 Mbps versus the standard DSL package’s maximum download speed of 1.5 Mbps

Posts: 4777 · Vonage Forum **MVM** Joined: Aug 30, 2005 Posts: 4777

ed56 wrote:

Currently my ISP says "up to 5mps" though I acutually get around 6 mps. If I get 3mps, they will try to troubleshoot, but no guarantee.

This is typical. This industry is the only one that I've ever heard of that can get away with that. Imagine going into a grocery store and buying a can of coffee that says "up to 1 pound inside". Very Happy

Posts: 249 · Posted: Mon Apr 21, 2008 10:32 am Post subject:

ed56 wrote:

This is typical. This industry is the only one that I've ever heard of that can get away with that. Imagine going into a grocery store and buying a can of coffee that says "up to 1 pound inside". Very Happy

Not the only one?? Have you ever checked the sticker on a new car? "Up to 25 miles per gallon", on a car that couldn't get more then 12 MPG falling into Grand Canyon. Exclamation

The latest from my ISP is that their bandwidth software is not working right but their working with the vendor. I noticed that I haven't used any bandwidth since I first checked last week. I'm feeling pretty comfortable though after reading these responses that Vonage will not cause any significent useage.