Well, lately I’ve been having a lot of problems with my cable company. I’ve been on the phone with them several times due to constant disconnects, slow speeds, and other miscellanious problems. Aparently the story I’ve gotten from them is that their lines are too full, and the traffic is causing lots of slowdowns. Recently though, I’ve found that this might not at all be the case. After doing some reasearch a few days ago due to noticing my lag spike constantly, I have found some very compelling evidence that my ISP is doing some traffic capping.

I was searching around and actually found this nice big post about Avenue. Now, within that post I have found the following post about their TOS http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r19766570-Re-Other-Charter-sold-local-franchise-to-Avenue-Broadband. This post seems to describe what is a bandwidth cap that they put on their customers. While this isn’t compelling enough to prove that they put a cap on people, I also found this post http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r20175452-. Now, this seems to show that they ARE capping users. How dumb is this?

I never really noticed a cap until recently. Over the past week or more, I have been getting very slow speeds for my downloads. At first I thought it was something else, but then I noticed it more and more, then happened to come across these posts, and finally everything added up! I’ve been capped! I pay around $70 for 10Mbit internet access… this seems really pricey if I’m going to get a cap put on me after 3GB of downloads. I almost go through this in a few days due to working from home. After getting all this information and now realizing what’s going on, I’m outraged. I can’t belive I’m paying so much for so little! I have plans to call them and confront them, so I’ll post again about how that goes. I’m also looking into other internet service providers, as I can’t have this type of service when I work from home. I also refuse to pay more money just so I can get more transfers, just to be capped again.

So, in conclusion, I just wanted to put it out there for anyone in the service area of Avenue Broadband. I think everyone should be aware of this, even though they’re trying to hide it.  It really pisses me off to see this happening and them not being very open about it. I think it’s very pricey for the amount I’m paying to have this cap.. anyway, I’ll post again when I get done talking with them.

UPDATE – 6-18-2008
Well, after a couple weeks, I’ve spoken to them, I’ve had a technition out here, and I’m still very upset. I can’t confirm or deny a cap on the internet speed. I called and spoke with two people who said my account was capped, however, both refered me to the local office because that’s where they do the capping at. So, once I called up there and spoke with them, they told me that they do not put caps on accounts anymore. Since that day I haven’t seemed to be under a cap, however I’m not getting my 10Mbit service. As I mentioned, I had a tech come out and check things out. He found a few problems with my line going to my cable modem and ran a whole new line for it. Since that, I have only been disconnected once, which was Monday (the 16th), and I was out for a good 6+ hours. So, I’m still very unhappy with my service, and I plan on getting DSL as soon as my credit card activates.