The two main metrics we are exploring are bandwidth (speed), and monthly usage. Bandwidth is the amount of data that can be transferred per second over the connection (also called the speed), and the focus is usually on how quick you are able to receive the data. Monthly usage (monthly traffic) is the amount of data that can be transferred (sent or received) per month. If you have 3 Mbps bandwidth, it means that you can download 3 Mb (Megabits) per second. With this speed, you can download the average song (about 3.5 MB - Megabytes) in less than 10 seconds. If you have 60 GB (Gigabytes) of monthly usage, you should be able to download this same song over 17,000 times per month, or 100,000+ web pages, or 40 hours of HD video.
For all Internet providers, the amount of data that can be sent and received at any moment is not an unlimited amount. The bandwidth limitation for a wireless provider is usually at the tower site, but this capacity is usually not consumed equally. The top 1 percent of high usage connections are responsible for around 25 percent of the network utilization, and the top 10 percent of the highest usage connections actually make up a majority of the total usage. The greater part of Internet use from heavy users is by and large from file sharing (bit-torrent, etc.) or from streaming video (Netflix, etc.), where the user may not even be actively using their computer while consuming these resources. With no limit on the amount of usage, a small portion of users will usually only leave a fraction of the available speed for the other 90 percent of users (even while away from their computer), which results in slower speeds for everybody. While a usage limit will not completely eliminate the possibility of slowdowns due to heavy users, having the heaviest users face the cap prevents it from happening on a constant basis throughout the month. An appropriately sized usage cap helps to ensure top available speeds for all users, so a per month usage limit allows us to provide higher per second speeds for everybody, and only a small amount of users are affected by the cap.
Most users will not come into contact from with the cap, but MCSNet provides a way to track your usage through our website if you happen to be concerned about your usage. The heaviest users are normally aware of the large amount of data that they are sending and receiving with their connection, and this is usually in the form of file sharing or streaming video. The number of web pages and emails transferred vastly outnumbers the instances of file sharing and streaming video, but file sharing and streaming video use so much data that they make up most of the total network usage. If you just use the web for web pages and email, then you should have few problems, as you would probably have to open more than 2,500 web pages to equal watching 1 hr of HD video. You may have a harder time if you plan to use the Internet for watching TV shows or renting movies, as this can lead to a huge amount of usage, and is the leading cause of peak time slowdowns.
Although some providers do not advertise a cap on the usage, there is always a cap of some sort, and with some providers, the cap is hidden in the speeds they allow or are able to provide. With no regulation on data usage, the heaviest users leave little left over, and as a result the expected speeds will be much slower on an unregulated network. Potential customers should be discouraged with signing into an unregulated network, as the lack of limits attracts the heaviest of users, and your expected Internet speed is very dependent on the usage of others in your network. Some providers will throttle the speed by more than 400% after a certain amount of data has been exchanged to limit the impact of a heavy user, so while they might not provide a monthly cap, a user may only be able to get a few seconds of speed before the rate is dropped to well below expected or usable high speed rates. Certain successful but deceptive marketing techniques have forced many Internet providers to follow suit to appear competetive, and quoted 'top' or 'up to' speeds is nearly universally abused in advertising.
Wireless providers are limited by rates that the technology is able to offer. Speeds can only be guaranteed to a maximum amount; there is no guaranteed minimum speed. The reality is that all Internet providers leverage a communal pool of resources to provide their top speeds, and guaranteeing a minimum rate for a package would suggest reserving that amount for every connection, which would mean much slower top speeds at all times, and network resources would never be fully utilized as some is always set aside for users coming online. The usage cap does translate to higher average speeds and increased likelihood of obtaining and sustaining the maximum rate, but most Internet usage is concentrated in the late evenings between 8pm and midnight, and the speed may vary if the usage of the tower resources reaches capacity during peak times.
Network upgrades are very common, and continuously in motion, but there is a limit to what is possible with this. One of the larger boundaries to wireless technology is the limited number of frequencies available from which to broadcast from. Once all available frequencies are in use, it becomes very difficult to add additional access points to a tower without interfering with an existing access point. The regulators of the wireless frequencies anticipate opening up more spectrum in the future, which will allow us to offer a more diversified offering of high speed services.
Advances in the technology have allowed us to increase our top speeds and usage amounts many times in the past. The allowed speeds and usage limits are a balancing act, where the goal is to provide the highest possible speeds, while limiting network congestion and the number of users who might run into the cap. For most users, the current usage limit is probably too lenient, and their experience would actually be improved with a smaller cap on everybody to ensure fair usage, but we want the cap to be far enough away for most people that they don't need to worry about it. We may adjust our rates or offer alternative packages as the technology improves and the demands on our network change.
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