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General discussion

CenturyTel Policing their DSL users

by justex07 Feb 21, 2009 3:32AM PST

Justin from Columbia, MO

Started listening to BOL over winter break when my iPhone ran out of new podcasts and headed to the ITMS on my phone to find some new podcasts. I've listened to every episode since.

Over the past couple of weeks, my 15mbps internet has been having a problem. Normally able to download TV/Movies from iTunes at 10mbps, now I was timing out over and over again. Forget about the Podcasts.

Websites weren't loading and Hulu just seemed to laugh at me.

I did some tests and found my ping time was at 2700+ms. Typically it stays around 50ms. Restarting the modem fixed the problem, but only temporarily.

After dealing with no-show after no-show, CenturyTel finally showed up today to try and fix it. Sadly, the tech did not know what a traceroute or ping was.

Seriously?

So then he made a call, asked if my account was one that was being "policed". It was. "Andrea" at CenturyTel said he turned off all the policing of my account and that things should go back to normal.

The tech said he didn't know exactly what policing was but had something to do with "programmers in a room or something".

Well, so far, 1 hour later, my internet is still doing fine. But what is this policing of my account? Has CenturyTel been eavesdropping or routing my internet? This is scary, a slippery slope to Net Neutrality?

Would love yours/your listeners insight.

Thanks guys and gals,

-justin

www.itsjustjustin.com
www.justinmoorescott.com
www.cakeandamovie.com

Discussion is locked

2 Posts
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Not alone
by justex07 Feb 23, 2009 2:21AM PST

I have found out through Twitter that I'm not the only CenturyTel customer having my internet policed. There are at last two others, here in Columbia Missouri alone, that are having the same issue.

What could this mean exactly?

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Policing.
by Renegade Knight Feb 23, 2009 3:52AM PST

1archaic : govern
2: to control, regulate, or keep in order by use of police
3: to make clean and put in order
4 a: to supervise the operation, execution, or administration of to prevent or detect and prosecute violations of rules and regulations b: to exercise such supervision over the policies and activities of
5: to perform the functions of a police force in or over

From M-W.com
Look at #1, #2 (without actually using the police and #3
In short, they are regulating your account because you are one of 'those' users they want to watch more closely due to what appears to be data issues. So they stuck a bandwidth cap on you further limiting your bandwidth from the higher limit you already had to live with.

Data = Amount of crud you are downloading like your videos.
Bandwidth = Rate of speed you can download the data.

Bandwidth x time = "Speed Cap" which is the theoretical amount of data you could "consume" as a user.

Data Cap = Maximum amount of data they want you to download before they "police you" It's less than your "Speed Cap".

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