With the wholesale UFB pricing being announced/leaked recently there has been a conspicuous lack of information about datacaps. At 30 Mb/s I could theoretically use up my current 20Gb data plan in 11 minutes!

LikeLike

Hi Mike,

I guess the better way to put it is, “Australia and New Zealand are among the few countries in the world where almost all providers limit the amount of data…”. It’s possible to get connections in New Zealand without bitcaps. It’s also possible to get connections in almost any country *with* bitcaps, but it’s uncommon.

Here’s a link to some better OECD data: http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/22/46/39575020.xls

The data shows that only five countries in the world have significant implementations of bitcaps.

LikeLike

You reckon? I went to the OECD publication you quoted to see which countries have bitcaps. 14 of the 30 nations listed have bitcaps. Other nations with bitcaps include Austria, Canada, Denmark, Iceland, Ireland, Luxemborg, UK & US.

LikeLike

I don’t think the bitcaps are going to hold up in Canada when it comes to fixed lines:

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/02/sorry-about-that-canada-rushes-to-reverse-metered-billing-decision.ars

There are still places though – even in the OECD – where bitcaps are a fact of life. This won’t last long.

With mobile broadband, carriers are either going to have to implement smart throttling, implement bitcaps, introduce tiered service products, or some combination of the three when users are attached to lower capacity cells. This is a “laws of physics” problem – there’s only so much spectrum out there.

LikeLike

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bandwidth_cap#Criticism_of_Usage-based_Billing_in_Canada
http://www.maclife.com/article/blogs/canadian_usagebased_internet_billing_money_play_large_isps

LikeLike

Fixed the link, thanks!

LikeLike

Cheers,
Sam

LikeLike