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Bandwidth caps explained, NTC endorsed

A recent draft memorandum by the NTC indicates some sort of service level agreement where ISPs are required to provide a minimum guaranteed speed on subscriptions as well as allow for daily bandwidth capping on subscribers.

The circular requires ISPs to deliver a minimum average of 80% of the subscribed plan for regular broadband/dial-up lines and 99% for leased lines.

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The NTC defines this accordingly:

… service reliability is measured over a period of one month and is derived by dividing the number of hours used in a day into the difference between hours used in a day and hours used below minimum connection speed in a day.

On the other hand, the NTC also endorsed recommendations by ISPs to put a daily cap on bandwidth usage. This clarifies the bandwidth caps already being imposed by telcos which we reported earlier.

While many would look at the “bandwidth caps” and cry foul, I’d look at the other provision that requires a minimum guaranteed speed based on the subscribed speed. This means if you subscribe to a 1Mbps plan, your average internet speed over a period of 1 month should not be under 800Kbps. If that’s the case, I’d gladly agree to be capped at 25GB per month (see Globe’s Broadband Internet bandwidth caps here).

I recently talked to a network engineer who’s a supplier of one of the telcos mentioned above and he explained how they arrived on the bandwidth caps imposed by the carriers.

What they do is they look at network traffic and determine how much bandwidth is used on a monthly basis. It turns out that over 99% of the users consume less than 1.5GB of bandwidth on their mobile phones.

The less than 1% who exceed are very few and inconsistent — meaning, they don’t consistently exceed 1.5GB on a month to month basis. Btw, this 1.5GB cap of Smart is for mobile 3G internet only.

In order to avoid regular users from being affected by the heavy users, the heavy users (those who exceed the 1.5GB cap) are isolated and transferred to a different network segment or bucket. The allocation for that small group in the segment is then limited. Hence, only the heavy users will be competing for the limited bandwidth in their bucket while all the regular users remain on the regular, uncongested network.

The rationale behind this policy has been studied and compared with other carriers in other countries worldwide. Of course, there are other factors that come into play.

I personally own several servers and re-sell bandwidth so I have a lot of experiences with system abuses. It’s the same reason why Cabalen imposes a double-the-price penalty to diners who put more food on their plate than they can finish. Same goes with Mang Inasal’s unlimited rice — just go try and ask for 100 cups of rice in one go. Or why the MMDA imposes number coding and restricts which car you can drive on a given day.

Apparently, in the Philippines, regular consumers don’t fully understand the “bucket system” so telcos resorted to time-based servicing. Remember that standard mobile internet used to be priced on a per KB basis back in the days? That did not work out well (the bucket system) so they shifted to the time-based billing system.

However, the time-based system is very prone to abuse (a problem which don’t exist if they imposed the bucket system). The throttling and capping of bandwidth to supplement time-based services allows the service providers to regulate the network and separate the heavy users from the regular users.

I don’t like the idea of putting caps but I’m okay with it as long as it’s a reasonable one. Just give me that 1Mbps speed I actually subscribed to. I hope this draft memorandum gets pushed thru so we can all get that 80% minimum guarantee on subscribed internet speeds.

Addendum: I think the issue here is the use of the word “unlimited” in the subscription plans when in fact it’s actually just a modified form of “bucket plans”. What if the NTC orders all the telcos to shift to “bucket plans” and sell internet connection on a pay per use basis? Say if you consume 15GB a month, you only pay Php500 but if you use 50GB in a month, your bill goes up accordingly (say Php1,500). I think that would have been a more straight-forward approach. Never mind if most of the consumers could not quantify what a gigabyte is. At least it’s not false advertising.

We’re not really that alien to caps. Even the MMDA has capped how many days you can drive your car in a week. We seem to be okay with that since everyone is experiencing how congested EDSA is.

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Avatar for Abe Olandres

Abe is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of YugaTech with over 20 years of experience in the technology industry. He is one of the pioneers of blogging in the country and considered by many as the Father of Tech Blogging in the Philippines. He is also a technology consultant, a tech columnist with several national publications, resource speaker and mentor/advisor to several start-up companies.

216 Responses

  1. Avatar for toto toto says:

    A paid agentl working for the two telcos!

  2. Avatar for toto toto says:

    A paid troll working for the two telcos!

  3. Avatar for PISTING GLOBE NA YAN PISTING GLOBE NA YAN says:

    I PAID FOR MY PLAN AND I INTEND TO USED EVERYTHING OF IT BECAUSE ITS WHAT I PAY FOR,,BESIDES I WOULD NOT BUY THAT PLAN IF I DON’T NEED IT..I PAY FOR 2MB BECAUSE I NEED TO USED ALL OF THE 2 MB….AND IF MY ISP FAIL TO GIVE WHAT I PAY FOR ,,THEN FUCK YOU,,,DON’T PAY YOUR BILLS AND CHANGE ISP,,,GOOD THING WE AINT MONOPOLY IN HERE…FUCK YOU GLOBE..

  4. Avatar for PISTING WAYANG GLOBE PISTING WAYANG GLOBE says:

    WHAT A FUCK EXPLANATION IS THIS…every Internet connection is already capped.. that’s why every subscriber has an allocated internet bandwidth according to their subscription..what a fuck comparing this internet to an eat all you can..a subscription is not like eat all yo can that you get anything yet just leaving it on the table that’s why you are charge for it..internet speed is not like that ..if you have a 1mb subscription you only can get a maximum of it to that speed but you could never be over to your subscription..that means you could not affect other users on the net work because you maximum consumption is based on your subscription ,,then how can you say that somebody is over getting than others?

  5. Avatar for cvk cvk says:

    Agreeing to such a cap is absurd.

    In return for a 3x improvement in speed you’re willing to give up 21,600x of data?

    Your analytical skills are sorely, sorely, lacking.

  6. Avatar for vince vince says:

    @Iho

    Ideally they should do that but if they do that they can get less subscribers. Less subs = less money

  7. Avatar for Iho Iho says:

    Maybe they should put a cap on the number of customers they can service, enough for their system to handle. Why get more consumers if your system can’t handle them? ISP would advertise unlimited 1mbps plans, which is around 86gb a day with the computer downloading for 24 hours, assuming they are giving us 1mbps consistently, and yet states that their system can’t handle it. Haven’t they computed these already when they went into the business of unlimted internet?

  8. Avatar for foodnotbomb foodnotbomb says:

    i reached my bandwidth cap on my 2nd month of subscription and we have a lock-in period of 1 yr..my question is, is there a chance na makalabas from the bucket system? let say after a month of suffering?

  9. Avatar for riribok riribok says:

    @Emman: siguro tama ka, in a way, hindi naman yata siguro lalabas ang capping na yan kung hindi pumasa sa board meeting ng mga individual isp’s natin…

  10. Avatar for riribok riribok says:

    @Emman:

    siguro nga tama ka, in a way, kasi nga hindi naman magcacapping ang nga isp’s kung hndi rin approved ng board…

  11. Avatar for Hzone Hzone says:

    “NO TO BANDWIDTH CAP”

    Unlimited nga yung plan eh bakit nila lilimitahan.

    Siguro ok yung bucketing ihihiwalay nila yung heavy user ng bandwith sa hindi heavy user. dapat hiwalay bandwidth ng DSL at 3G.

  12. Avatar for Emman Emman says:

    ganito kabobo ang mga engineer ng mga telecomm.. indi sila competitive, tumatakas sa problema pinapasa sa mga subscriber ang problema nila.. tau tuloy ang ngsa-suffer.. nagbabayad tau ng sapat., pero ang service nila di sapat.. kung my bandwidth capping, dapat payment capping din.. kung ang Php999 1Mbps mo ay bumaba ng 800kbps, dapat dapat bumaba din ng 80% ang payment mo at less pa di d2 ang capacity per month mo. tae..

  13. Avatar for kyflo kyflo says:

    Tama na ang reklamo at bangayan..

    NTC JUNKS THE BROADBAND CAP PROPOSAL!!!

  14. Avatar for jose marie palubon jose marie palubon says:

    like my globe wimax getting capped at 15th day the problem is that the .300 kbps speed when capped is not also stable rather at most time speed test ranging form 150 kbps to 250 kbpss only, a month with out download just full facebook and youtube at maximum of
    16 hours usage a day, even doing assignment is difficult at 150 kbps

  15. Avatar for madmaxx madmaxx says:

    http://newsbytes.ph/2011/01/10/telco-group-yes-to-broadband-cap-no-to-minimum-speed/

    ganito ka kapal ang mukha ng mga telcoms

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