this post was submitted on 30 Aug 2023
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They aren't rate limiting bandwidth, but monthly utilization and those are uncoupled values. Besides your plan already limits your bandwidth. The data cap is just an added fee.
No, I mean limited bandwidth as in all together, not individually. You can't have unlimited bandwidth because you don't have unlimited resources.
But monthly caps aren't a cap on bandwidth? Bandwidth is a measure of throughput and that's not what monthly caps are. If it were, then when you used up your monthly cap you just couldn't use any more of it because you'd have run out, but that isn't how it works, if you exceed your cap you get charged a fee, that's it. It's just an extra fee for using your internet.
It doesn't make sense in aggregate either, if I used my entire monthly cap in the shortest possible time period and then stopped using internet for the rest of the month, that would be the most stress I could possibly put on the network. And it wouldn't cost me anything extra. But if I use 1.3TB instead of 1.2TB over the entire month there is no appreciable extra stress on the network, but I get charged a fee for it. It's a bullshit fee.
You just said it doesn't make sense as an aggregate, and then went on to describe something that is literally not an aggregate... That's not what an aggregate is
It does make sense as an aggregate. These sorts of limits are used all over the tech industry, it's a form of rate limiting. Doing it on a monthly time scale instead of a daily or hourly one still aggregates very similarly.
Do I agree with it? No, it's bullshit these days, but you are clearly misrepresenting the problem space that's used to justify it.