AT&T: Internet Data Caps, Overage Fees 'Inevitable'
Company spokesman Michael Coe explained to the Associated Press that the top 5 percent of AT&T's DSL customers consume 46% of its total bandwidth, and overall usage is doubling every year and a half.
"A form of usage-based pricing for those customers who have abnormally high usage patterns is inevitable," Coe said, adding that AT&T has not yet decided on any specific plans or fees for its subscription packages.
While relatively common overseas, capped internet subscription programs have been rather scarce in the United States, and are likely to concern some gamers.
An HD movie downloaded from Microsoft's online Xbox Live Marketplace typically weighs in at 4.5GB, and demos of upcoming games can be in excess of a full gigabyte in size. Select PC games available on Valve's digital distribution platform Steam exceed 4GB.
Earlier this month, Time Warner announced that it was field-testing a new service plan in which subscribers would be charged $1 per every gigabyte of data downloaded over a 15- or 40-gigabyte cap, depending on subscription level.
Comcast is said to be considering a similar plan with a $15 charge for every 10GB downloaded beyond a 250GB limit.
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BlitzMayhem
replyI really don't see how this is news - high speed internet in Canada has worked this way for about 10 years now.
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apparently living in Canada makes you dumb because its pretty obvious why this is news
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[deleted]
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Not unlike your broken health care system where you wait to die, this will not work in the US either.
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Not true. You don't have to look further than all the illegal aliens here in TX filling up the ER to see that this is false.
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You're not screwed. The people still paying insurance is screwed, because short of a nose job or other elective procedure, you'll still get health care.
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This is how I'm seeing it, in the UK there used to be caps, now tehre mostly isnt except on very cheap tariffs, this seems like a massive step backward when they should be inviting more customers in to pay for upgrades to systems and the communications infrastructure.
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I've never been charged for an overage. Ever.
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[deleted]
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^^^ spoken truth.
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No, that is how it's worked in British Columbia for (about?) 5 years. Just because Shaw and Telus do it doesn't mean the rest of the country does.
I'm not sure about the prairie provinces, but from Ontario eastward, Bell does nothing of this sort and Rogers is only starting to do so this month. My usage on Rogers indicates that my bill will fall in the $1500-$2000 range once they implement the BS, but what most people aren't aware of is that they cap the overage charges to $25 in a month (at least for the time being).
Oh, and don't think that jumping ship to an uncapped ISP is going to send anyone a strong message. The number of users who care about this is small to start off with, and when you narrow it down further to users who care and will actually *do* something about it other than grumbling on forums... that's not much of a protest. Besides, they're probably glad to see us go if we tax their infrastructure as much as they claim.
What makes me mad is the mixed message that ISPs send. They keep on jacking up their speeds (I'm on an 18 Mbit connection), and then tell you that you can't do anything that would justify the high speed because they're infrastructure can't handle it. WTF?
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