Internet Bandwidth and Capped limits – What does it mean?

Internet Bandwidth and Capped limits – What does it mean?

Canadians have to feel the pinch of broadband download limits or face the wrath of excess charges at $3 a GB. Naturally the Telcos and Cablecos are trying to protect themselves from the new entrants in the marketplace but at the consumer’s expense of higher and higher monthly fees.

I am a Rogers customer so if they feel threatened by Netflix and AppleTV then they need to offer a better or similar service or enhance their offerings. With the proliferation of HDTV OTA antennas sprouting up on rooftops and Satellite FTA dishes, I can see how shareholders are getting worried about the share price. The past few months Rogers has worked hard to improve their cable and HDTV offering.

So if you have a 90GB plan what does this all mean to the average user?

• One hour of a standard definition movie from Netflix is about 1GB…so 3 hours of Netflix a day for one month
• The average song downloaded is about 5Mb and I seem to get a fair amount of large attachments so that’s 18000 songs a month
• One hour of CBC news at high definition on Apple TV is 1.6GB so that’s 56 news casts or 1.8 shows per night for a month
So if you have traffic that exceeds the 90GB limit then you may be in for a shock when an extra $30, $40 or even $60 shows up on your next bill.

One also needs to be concerned about download speeds to ensure a clear and jitter free or pixelated screen so it’s important your connection support at least a 5MB download speed with the higher the better.

So choose your plans accordingly to avoid excess charges or maybe the new wireless entrants with their 3G unlimited data plans will make a lot of sense. If WIND mobile ran an ad campaign called the “Cut the Cord” program and threw in a HDTV antenna they may just become a bigger worry to their competitors.

*****To clarify the point I was trying to make in context of the response I got from Rogers (by the use of what I believe to be Avaya Social Media Manager and I now have a real world example that it works...works fast too) was that the use of streamed video content from Netflix or Apple TV ends up using bandwidth that is charged by the amount of download to the customer. I was not aware of the Online TV service Rogers offers and will have tio investigate if I need to connect my iPad to the TV with an HDMI cable or if it streams off the HDTV box.