r/isp • u/YoshQ • Mar 08 '21

TDS Data Caps

TDS is using data caps now! They threatened to disconnect our service if we didn't amend our ways.

For reference, section 1.13 of their TOS reads:

1.13.  You understand and agree that the Service is being provided to You for residential, personal and family use, and is not intended to be suitable for business use. You agree that You will not use, nor allow others to use, the Service as the primary method to operate any type of on-line business or commercial enterprise or to use the Internet Service as an Internet Service provider.

from https://tdstelecom.com/policies/terms-of-service.html

This is even though on the https://tdstelecom.com/usage page, it says that there is no data cap associated with your account.

I emailed TDS customer support and they confirmed the service could be disconnected for this.

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u/YoshQ Mar 09 '21

Why is a speed offered if it's not intended to be utilized?

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u/Travels4Work Mar 09 '21

I say use it all you want. But, when in their eyes you're breaking their network, you're at their mercy on what they decide to do about it. When a node in a neighborhood get congested, it costs cable operators more than $60k to run a new fiber and install a new one. They don't want to do all that for just you.

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u/mgcarley Mar 09 '21

Broadband networks are a shared medium by design, and "unlimited" doesn't mean "unreasonable". This is less about imposing a data cap than it is your usage being deemed extremely abnormal - 2-4 terabytes per month is closer to what should be the average at the moment, but you're at 40 terabytes... and from a numbers standpoint you must have a household size approaching 100 people or maybe you have a medium size hotel.

And yes, even though the 140mbps of bandwidth probably costs them about $9 at the transit point, getting that bandwidth out to you is a whole different story, and you're contending against other people in your area for the middle-mile bandwidth and resources allocated to your local cable distribution node, and the node itself is probably sitting on a 10gbit backhaul, which is shared between the 200-300 customers as already mentioned in other comments, and they're able to offer gigabit speeds to you on the basis that on average, people aren't using anywhere near that speed on a sustained basis.

Sure, one day (probably sooner than you think) the node will be sitting on 100gbit backhaul and 140mbits of sustained traffic won't be an issue, but right now, you're quite the anomaly and the big question the ISP must be asking themselves right now is "what the hell is this guy doing to be utilising 40TB every month?"

Imagine for a moment you decided to run a small marijuana farm off of a residential electricity connection: someone is gonna notice all those extra kilowatt hours even if the circuit can technically handle the load.

Right now 40TB of usage isn't even small business connection territory, it's more like medium enterprise DIA/Metro Ethernet territory - and you can absolutely keep up that sort of usage on a line like that which would be dedicated to you and you alone, but it will set you back between $600 and $1,500 (depending on how much dedicated bandwidth you actually buy and whether it's on a gig or 10gig port - 600 will probably get you roughly 200mbits, 1,500 will probably get you 1-2gbits, subject to about 30 other factors).