Monday, February 24, 2020

Changes in ISP may effect streaming quality/frequency

Recently I switched my phone to another provider & found out afterwards that by removing my phone from my current internet service provider, this was NOT going to save me any money (only dropping it about $4 per month, meaning I was actually paying more between the 2 services).  I decided to leave this for a month to at least get the prorated refund from overpaying the bill last month, but when I go my new bill from XFINITY, it became clear that the damage was far worse than originally expected, I not only didn't get the prorated refund I was promised on the next bill, the monthly price was also jacked up almost $20 more per month that originally quoted.

On 2/24/2020, it was decided that I needed to switch my ISP ASAP, the changes are already in motion & it doesn't fare well with my gaming habits or ability to stream to Twitch, so this may effect how often I'm able to stream to Twitch, what quality I am able to stream at or could just negate my ability to stream at all (this will be determined when I attempt to stream over this ISP for the first time).

This is what's currently know regarding the changes that are being made:
  • Downloads are going to take a LOT longer to download (when gaming is concerned, this means patches & new games), so that's going to effect frequency of streams (once I'm able to get back to streaming, health issues have been the main hindrance of regular streams for roughly 2 months now).
  • The upload rate is going to a mere 2 mbps upload rate (I had 10 mbps with the other ISP that I'm now switching from), so this might effect the quality of streams or possibly effect my ability to stream at all if I have to drop upload bitrate on video encoding too far to be able to meet what the upload bandwidth is capable of.
Currently I don't know what is going to come out of the monthly data cap, that will likely be the determining factor as to whether I can stream at all, if not needing a quality downgrade to still remain functional under the lowered upload rate.  I was told it was unlimited (later they changed that statement to give an actual variable), provided it at least gives me 500 GBs over a month, I may still be able to stay within this restriction while streaming, however only time will tell...

Eventually I want to switch to Google Fiber, but currently this is not available in my area, I have put myself on a mailing list to let me know when it does become available.  This will give me a much higher upload rate & a definite increase in download rate from what I'm going to be stuck with with this new ISP, but until then, I'll will be confined to new limitations with this new ISP until I am able to get a decent ISP in my area.

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