I love the paper-thin justification here the most. "We have to do this because people don't want to pay for bandwidth they don't use!"<p>OK, where's my $10 a month refund for every 50 GB I go <i>under</i> the limit?
The idea that 2% of users using 20% of the bandwidth is hurting "normal" people is a PR move that is going to do great harm to future innovation. The way I see it those 2% of users are early adopters and a couple of years from now "normal people" will be using as much bandwidth as the current 2% does. Limiting bandwidth now hurts future innovation.
I think instead of being able to advertise "up to" speeds, ISPs should have to advertise the overall average speed you can use in a month taking into account usage caps.<p>150GB/month works out to .47MBit/sec sustained throughput. If AT&T had to advertise that rate instead of 6Mbit for DSL lines, they'd think twice about caps.<p>UVerse is even worse--~1Mbit/sec instead of 24.
Our family watches a lot of Netflix. My kids will watch several movies or shows throughout the day, my wife watches her shows, and we might throw a movie on in the evening after the kids have gone to bed. If the average size of a 2 hour movie on Netflix is 1.8GB (source: <a href="http://blog.streamingmedia.com/the_business_of_online_vi/2009/03/estimates-on-what-it-costs-netflixs-to-stream-movies.html" rel="nofollow">http://blog.streamingmedia.com/the_business_of_online_vi/200...</a>) and if we watch on average move than 2.7 movies a day, then we will almost definitely hit our 150GB limit every month. Especially considering that we use the internet for a lot of other stuff too, like video chatting with out of town family members, work related file transfers, offsite backups, etc.<p>We don't use bittorrent, we don't download music illegally, but we will most definitely be dropping AT&T for a different service, as soon as we find one that won't cap our usage (since Comcast is the only cable provider available in our area).<p>This is crap.
I feel like this is less about ability to handle the 2% who go over the bandwidth limit and more a means to fight piracy. I would assume the 2% who go over 150/250gb/month are people sharing large amounts of media (sure people like me download tons of legal soundboard recordings from bands, etc, but probably not the majority of that 2%). By capping the bandwidth, they can effectively cripple the ability for some to share large amounts of movies/shows/music.
It's amazing how much has been given to ATT & Verizon to build out new fiber networks (which they still haven't finished) and now when people start using them to their potential we will be hit with overages, awesome.<p>It won't get any better until the cities/localities remove exclusive territory rights for companies that provide phone and cable.
My calculator tells me that, with my low-end DSL connection, I could eat that up in about 10 1/2 days. That's not <i>too</i> bad of a limit, but I do worry about what precedence it helps set. When I signed up, they were very clear about saying that it was unlimited*.
We are having big shifts to content distribution over the internet with things like itunes, netflix, Amazon streaming movies, Apple TV, Skype, video chat, games, and software. Comcast (xfinity) and AT&T are going to do their best to cripple the internet to protect their other sources of revenue.<p>I recently moved to Seattle and had no choice but to sign up with Comcast. I wanted to have streaming video of NHK Japan coverage open while I'm doing things around the house. I'm to worried about eating into my monthly limit to do so.
Comcast has the same thing 250GB cap and has such for 3 to 4 years. No one is blowing through 250GB watching netflix, hulu and such, which I think is the reason behind this move by AT&T.
This actually sounds pretty reasonable.<p>Now I'm wondering if they'll continue being reasonable with a clear commitment to a specific speed, or - at the very least - a decent and reliable average.<p>If so, they'll be in a position to run marketing campaigns where they start assaulting those godawful "up to" claims by demonstrating what their competitors actually average.<p>Alternately, this really is about offering less for more. I suspect we'll know one way or the other within six months.
I think this is fair. Bandwidth costs money, usage likely follows a power law distribution, and their fees are reasonable:<p>AT&T: $10/50 GB = 20 cents/GB<p>Amazon S3/EC2: 10 cents/GB<p>It's not like we're being gouged here...
Glad to see US ISP's starting to take a note from Canadian (and Australian) ISP's. Next, you can look forward to unabashed packet shaping, as practiced by Rogers.
Bullshit. Nearly every broadband ISP in the US has had unlimited download and upload for the last 12+ years. When I got my first cable modem in 1997 and since then, its always been unlimited. While our access speeds have gone up, they haven't gone up in comparison to other nations. What AT&T and other providers are saying is that they haven't been investing in their backbone and regional connections, while increasing customer speeds. This is complete bullshit.
If this isn't simply a way to generate more cash while still appearing price competitive to the newcomer, why not implement soft caps?<p>I anticipate many technically disinclined people receiving very large bills as a result of running an open wireless network.