Does Crispy not get charged for downloading AND uploading? Somebody could ping him to death and make him go over his limit.
No, I don't, and no they couldn't.* I can upload for free; it's only downloads that count. I get a certain quota of gigabytes (based on the plan; more expensive plans have higher quotas). If I exceed the quota then I get charged 15 cents per extra megabyte downloaded. (You can also get slightly more expensive plans, called "shaped" plans, which don't have an extra per-megabyte charge. Instead, your speed gets temporarily throttled down to roughly dial-up levels when you go over your quota; so you can still download as much as you like and you don't get charged for it, but your download speed sucks.)
* Theoretically someone could probably send me heaps of junk data and the ISP would charge me for it, but it hasn't happened yet. Why would anyone bother? Sure, I get the occasional port scan (which get stopped by my router), but they're just connection attempts and only take up a few bytes of bandwidth each.
Also, either way, you are using the phone companys resources.
True, but I could just as easily reverse that: If you sign up for a cheap and speedy internet service and download constantly then you're probably costing them more money than they're making from you (bandwidth costs ISPs money). In both cases, there are some users on which the service provider doesn't make money (or loses money), but they're subsided by the other users.
Anyway, I just find it strange that Aussies get charged more for internet usage than Americans do, but Americans get charged more for mobile phones than Aussies do...
No, I don't, and no they couldn't.* I can upload for free; it's only downloads that count. I get a certain quota of gigabytes (based on the plan; more expensive plans have higher quotas). If I exceed the quota then I get charged 15 cents per extra megabyte downloaded. (You can also get slightly more expensive plans, called "shaped" plans, which don't have an extra per-megabyte charge. Instead, your speed gets temporarily throttled down to roughly dial-up levels when you go over your quota; so you can still download as much as you like and you don't get charged for it, but your download speed sucks.)
* Theoretically someone could probably send me heaps of junk data and the ISP would charge me for it, but it hasn't happened yet. Why would anyone bother? Sure, I get the occasional port scan (which get stopped by my router), but they're just connection attempts and only take up a few bytes of bandwidth each.
True, but I could just as easily reverse that: If you sign up for a cheap and speedy internet service and download constantly then you're probably costing them more money than they're making from you (bandwidth costs ISPs money). In both cases, there are some users on which the service provider doesn't make money (or loses money), but they're subsided by the other users.
Anyway, I just find it strange that Aussies get charged more for internet usage than Americans do, but Americans get charged more for mobile phones than Aussies do...