Yes, Your Internet Is Getting Slower

[sweetloukillbot]

30. I don't think the cable companies anticipated how much streaming would take off

I work tech support for a minor ISP - and every night for the past 6-8 months we get hammered by utilization. Started around Thanksgiving. And after we had a showdown over carriage fees for some networks. When we added 50 mb service about 3 years ago, the studies at the time indicated that few of our customers used that much bandwidth - and with the exception of Netflix and torrenting, much use doesn't need that much. But when they phased out the slower speed plans and moved everyone to the 50mb plan, all of a sudden everyone started taking advantage of it and started using Netflix and ground our network to a halt. In 2010 we thought that the upgrades we'd made would be sufficient for the foreseeable future, now we're scrambling to upgrade our entire system to meet the current demands. It sucks for the customer (and it sucks for the customer service peons like me who get the irate calls) and I'm sure the cost is going to be passed on to the consumer at the next rate hike.
And with the increased use of wireless and everyone in the family having their own device to stream, combined with the falling viewership on cable tv and networks increasing their carriage fees, it's only going to get worse. Cable TV is dead, the Internet is going to replace it, and unfortunately the infrastructure isn't there to support it yet.