Here’s an interesting thought I had about bandwidth quotas recently…
Ever since the dawn of “broadband” (xDSL or its variants) way back in the mid 90s (approximately?) there have always been users who would attempt to maximize usage of their connection. Why is it that only recently quotas have conveniently popped up?
Early xDSL started at (from memory) about 256kbps but 512kbps was far more common during the early 2000s – let’s take 512kbps for our calculations. So, in this example, our random 512kbps connection would be able to download approximately 150GB per month way back in 2000.
Now, here we are in 2011… bandwidth prices wholesale or consumer have dropped considerably. How is it that companies like Telekom Malaysia are pushing out the “latest” in FTTH fiber optics at 5/10/20Mbps but with quotas of 60/90/120GB per month? Based on this logic, a POTS copper xDSL 512kbps connection from 10 years ago would theoretically be able to download more than a fiber optic 20Mbps connection today in 2011.
Have I missed something or is Telekom Malaysia trying to tell us that bandwidth costs are more expensive today than 10 years ago? Hmm…