More broadband caps in the US, AT&T starts today

Julio Franco

Posts: 9,092   +2,043
Staff member

At one point unlimited bandwidth was almost regarded a universal right in the United States and many other developed nations, but the growing demand for on-demand video and peer-to-peer traffic has left ISPs scrambling for ways to avoid excessive burdens on their networks. And unfortunately – for bandwidth hogs, at least – monthly download caps and overage charges have become a harsh reality.

Starting today AT&T will be enforcing hard caps on its broadband user base, the second largest of the country with approximately 16 million subscribers. DSL users will be limited to 150GB of downstream data, while U-Verse caps are a little more permitting at 250GB. AT&T plans to charge overage fees of $10 for every additional 50GB of data, though the company will issue two monthly warnings before you get billed.

Earlier this year when confronted with the question of why they were enforcing this limitation, AT&T said that less than 2 percent of their customers would be affected, and that this "top 2 percent of residential subscribers were using about 20 percent of the bandwidth" on their network. According to Wired, with the change AT&T is joining the leagues of Comcast and many other smaller ISPs around the country that are putting a price to a fixed amount of Internet usage.

Perhaps it's too dramatic to call this the return of the dial-up days, but the fact remains that over the past decade we've grown accostumed to the idea that broadband is unlimited and that no matter what we decide to do with it, it's always there so we can look up information, exchange emails, watch videos, download software, or upload content that we're backing up or wanting to share with others. Although it's easy to assume torrent users are likely within that 2% group of heavy usage subscribers, ISPs are taking more issue with video-streaming services like Hulu and Netflix.

Just last March Netflix announced lower video quality streams to counter bandwidth caps set by Canadian ISPs. Netflix estimates that an hour of standard definition video will at the very least consume 0.3GB/hour, while best quality videos will use about 1.0 GB/hour for SD or up to 2.3GB/hour when streaming HD content.

Finally, Wired shares an interesting statistic that makes it clear that bandwidth costs are not the reason ISPs are concerned about heavy data usage. "Time Warner Cable brought in $1.13 billion in revenue from broadband customers in the first three months of 2011, while spending only $36 million for bandwidth — a mere 3 percent of the revenue. Time Warner Cable doesn’t currently impose bandwidth caps or metering on its customers — though they have reserved the right to do so — after the company’s disastrous trial of absurdly low limits in 2009 sparked an immediate backlash from customers and from D.C. politicians."

Instead it's about local infrastructures and how customers that are exceeding normal use impact neighbors' connection speeds. Nonetheless that's where things start to get messy as we throw in net neutrality in the mix along with cable companies' interest in keeping current subscribers hooked to their offerings while more content becomes available online through both free and paid services.

Permalink to story.

 
Oh no... how am I going to complete my collection of every TV show, movie, and music album I'll never watch?

I might not even be able to torrent the all the latest games or the Office 2010 and Windows 7 and the Adobe CS5 Master Collection (who would even want the "lesser" versions?).

...Hmm? Am I missing something? Oh. Maybe the latest Ubuntu, LibreOffice, and other open source software. I guess.

I sometimes check them out. When I get around to them.
 
Guest said:
Oh no... how am I going to complete my collection of every TV show, movie, and music album I'll never watch?

I might not even be able to torrent the all the latest games or the Office 2010 and Windows 7 and the Adobe CS5 Master Collection (who would even want the "lesser" versions?).

...Hmm? Am I missing something? Oh. Maybe the latest Ubuntu, LibreOffice, and other open source software. I guess.

I sometimes check them out. When I get around to them.

HUH?
 
"another reason to stay away from America for me".

Yep - I heard that Pakistan or Burkina Faso may be the social paradise we all waited for. Go there!
 
Boo hoo! Poor Americans :(

I live in a first world country and no one, repeat, no one has ever even been given the option of having those kind of download caps. Ours are mostly below that, with either a lowering of speed cap (to like 64Kb/s or similar) or some ridiculous $ per Megabyte over cap.
 
You just gotta love those companies stealing your money don't you? This is ridiculous. I pay for my internet usage, I don't pay to be limited.
 
stewi0001 said:
gotta love going backwards....

Considering the facts, no we are not likely going backwards! companies just realized they cant keep up the speed hysteria, they may had overloaded whit ton of users and now they cant give their services whit out overloading :(

I live in Mexico and i have 2048Kbps wich is .2MB/s but since last year they had been slowly raising it to 10240Kbps (1MB/S) i had tested my dl cap and if i have it its superior to 460GBs (500GB's is what i can dl whit my speed in a month) and my collage friend whit 10240Kbps, well lets that he downloads a lot and neither him had saw a cap :p

But and i say BUT, we dont have movie streaming services and that may be the difference !
 
'Starting today AT&T(...) DSL users will be limited to 150GB of downstream data, while U-Verse caps are a little more permitting at 250GB. AT&T plans to charge overage fees of $10 for every additional 50GB of data, though the company will issue two monthly warnings before you get billed.' That's still pretty good compared to what i have here in Canada: I pay close to $60 a month for 50GB of downstream AND upstream data COMBINED. And the overage fees are $4.50 per gigabyte for a maximum of $50 surcharge.
 
Get use to cap it going to be reality. But almost almost these ISP forget mention the caps only apply to home users/residential not to business users with thier services.
 
LOL they tried that in Canada just a few months back.. it' got booted out the door and sent back to the CRTC to 'try again'. I love the arguments used by the the providers.. anyone who has a apple or netflix or google TV system IS part of the 'top 2%, anyone who plays MMO or consoles online is part of that top 2%.. in reality it's going to be hard to find people who are not part of that top 2% as they are the 'norm now' the providers just want it to sound like it's pirates or evil do-ers they are going after, it's you. They make the internet sound like a finite resource. Like it will run out and therefore NEED to raise rates to find more electrons.. total BS.
 
150gigs is still VERY GOOD. I download like 4gigs a month on my 60Kbps connection (it is very painful to say the least) and my ISP will come up with a message that I have used 80% of my download limit and wishes me happy browsing.And then my speed would be downgraded to like 30Kbps. :(

And my net connection is supposed to be a broadband connection! I feel like bashing my ISP provider.
Virtually I have never experienced a 256Kbps(the minimum legal requirement in my country to be termed as broadband) download speed(although my connection is supposed to be one)...

The max I have experienced is somewhere near 200Kbps that too lasting for a couple of minutes.Its an event that occurs about once in five or six months.And it feels like heaven for those couple of minutes :)

Well, I guess these are the perils of living in a third world nation(as many people out there like to term it).
 
There are other places then US, Pakistan or Burkina Faso

You are more then welcome to visit Sweden.

100/100Mbit quite common, no caps what so ever,

Download what you want, when you want.
 
I had a great argument with the Charter person that called me regarding my caps. She actually went and said that they never offered "unlimited" internet in the first place. When I asked her if she wants me to mail her a copy of the flyer they sent to my house advertising it, she quickly backtracked and said that the TOS changed in the last bill I got. When I actually looked at the bill, there was nothing there. When I asked her why are they still charging me the same rate as for the unlimited internet as before, she said that is a sales matter, and not her department.

When they called me about a year before, they were asking me what kind of security I had on my computer, as they were afraid that I was part of some botnet. I told them that I am very aware of what is downloaded on my computer, and asked them again if this was an unlimited account. At that time they said yes.

They're already charging me 10 bucks a month because i don't have actual cable TV.

But then I saw this metered trend coming a few years ago, so I did what I had to do back then. =)
 
Guest said:
Boo hoo! Poor Americans :(

I live in a first world country and no one, repeat, no one has ever even been given the option of having those kind of download caps. Ours are mostly below that, with either a lowering of speed cap (to like 64Kb/s or similar) or some ridiculous $ per Megabyte over cap.

So I should be fed **** because someone somewhere else is fine eating it?
 
JudaZ said:
There are other places then US, Pakistan or Burkina Faso

You are more then welcome to visit Sweden.

100/100Mbit quite common, no caps what so ever,

Download what you want, when you want.

From what I hear plenty of people have been doing just that. How's that working out for y'all?
 
Guest said:
You just gotta love those companies stealing your money don't you? This is ridiculous. I pay for my internet usage, I don't pay to be limited.

I pay for it too, and I don't pay to be limited by johnny next door downloading every movie he can get his hands on, bogging down the system. If you read the article, the big issue they are running into is QoS for people across the board. When 2% of the population is taking up 20% of the resources, there is a problem.
 
Zilpha said:

I pay for it too, and I don't pay to be limited by johnny next door downloading every movie he can get his hands on, bogging down the system. If you read the article, the big issue they are running into is QoS for people across the board. When 2% of the population is taking up 20% of the resources, there is a problem.

Excellent way to deal with 2% of the internet users by limiting the other 98%.
 
Back