AT&T says it will impose caps on DSL data use

Sure it is

Netflix streaming is 2.5GB per hour. I guess they're using the iTunes metric for the size of an HD movie? Not the best choice, being 720p.

Poor babies. Try living in a rural area with only 3G available, and it's capped at 5 GB per month. We have to pay for two subscriptions each at $60 for a total of $120 a month to get 10 GB.

In all honesty, this will be happening more and more. ISPs could care less about the top 2% of their bandwidth users. It's the 98% (aka golden goose) they want to keep.

I don't do the torrent thing personally, but I've ripped a few Blu-Ray movies and they were between 8-9GB per movie.
150GB = 50 high definition movies? They could, at least, be honest about it.

And what if you watch a lot of stuff on Hulu and other sites - I imagine that you'd approach that 150GB number fairly quickly.

Glad I'm not with AT&T.

Not happy w/ AT&T about this but...
needs to be merged into this thread..

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1321643

Really? I've ripped my entire collection of about 75-80 Blu Rays, and I don't think a single one of them was 9GB or less. Typically they're around 18-20GB, plus about 5GB for HD audio if you include that. A couple were as high as 35GB. Animated movies are less, but they're still usually at least 15GB or so.

Now, if you run a x264 rip where you reduce the video bitrate then you could get them down to around that size with only a minor reduction in quality. That's what those eeeevil pirates do.

For example, streaming a single HDX movie through VUDU is between 8 and 10GB. That'll chew through your cap fast. I probably watch at least 1 of those a week, sometimes more.

I'm not nearly as tech savvy as most of the people here (yourself included, it appears), so I probably didn't do a proper copy.....that is, I didn't have the settings down right. I'll have to check it and see.

In any event, good point about VUDU - this cap is a joke. But in the end the free market will dictate what they do.....if enough people bolt because they are streaming movies online and are hitting the cap then AT&T will have to adjust. There will always be a company out there ready and willing to fill the vacuum.

I have at&t DSL I DL a fair bit of torrants, watch HULU, Netflix and stream other TV programs and my kids and I play online games on the PS3 alot and last month I used 141gb so im going to have to watch what im doing for awhile.
Im willing to bet comcrap and everyone else will be following them.

Yes -- for a price they will. Remember that, always for a price. Internet bandwidth is like electricity, natural gas and cell phone minutes -- it is a metered commodity. They can count how much you use and charge you for your consumption. Anyone who doesn't think that is coming is deluding themselves. It's just a question of whether they use the utility model -- pay by the GB -- or the cell phone model -- pay a tiered fee for an allotment of use or lose bandwidth.

There are limits with Comcast too and if you get to them they will send you a cease and desist letter. I've done my *best* to explore this limit the past few months and to my belief it must be 250GB+ download.

Comcast implemented caps in the Portland metro area several years ago. But, as part of that, there was a sub-screen for your account on their web site where they let you see how much you downloaded the previous month. In my case it only averaged about 35 GB. And, yes, the monthly limit was 250 GB. I'm not sure of the current Comcast situation, because I moved to FiOS.

I'm a heavy web surfer, albeit with NoScript running so I don't download flash. And IMO it's *impossible* to get to 250 GB just by web surfing. But OTOH it wouldn't be that hard to get there if extensive HD video streaming or downloading were involved.

As much as I'd like to tell you that you are probably wrong, I have to agree.

I'm sure that there will be one provider that will try to stand out and offer "unlimited internet access" but the service will be real, real slow and thus not worth it.

Here's the rub - people are going to have to pay for access to services like Netflix and then they're going to have to pay a premium for the bandwidth to be able to watch/stream High Definition movies. I recently read a story about Netflix in Canada....Netflix is reducing the quality of their streams because of the capped usage in Canada -

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817...069TX1K0001121

Comcast in Illinois/Indiana (Chicago Metro) imposes a cap. 250gb is what they claim. No overage penalites and a claim that a cease and desist letter will be mailed should you break it. It seems that it's more of a "You'll get the hairy eyeball from us if you violate this cap" and not a whole lot else.

You can log into your account and check your usage meter for a snapshot of your total use for the month with a 3 hr delay.

With some prodigous use of Netflix on 2 TV's, a veritable horde of websurfing and some pretty extensive Starcraft 2 playtime we're barely into the 180gb mark so far this month.

It varies by region. There are posts in other threads in AVS that Comcast will tolerate you to exceed the cap some 2 or 3 times, with subsequent warnings, then kick you off the system for 6 months.

I thought about my post to you and realized my analogy to gas and electric was not quite right.

Internet service is not the product you are buying -- it is the delivery charge for the product. Look at your deregulated electric bill. You pay a fee for each KWhr you consume and you pay a delivery fee for each of those consumed KWhr. In my area, you are free to shop around and contract from any supplier for your electric power ("the content"), but you still pay the electric company (the guys who own/maintain the wires to your house) a delivery charge for each KWhr you consume ("the bandwidth"). Moreover, there is a minimum delivery charge you will pay just to have the line running to your house. So in a sense, you pay a minimum rate for delivery of 0-xx KWhr and then pay a per unit delivery charge for each KWhr in excess of "xx" ("the cap").

This is all "capped" Internet service is. You pay a flat fee for delivery of 0-xx GB of "content" and then pay a unit charge for any GB delivered over "xx" (your "cap"). As for the content, you are free to shop around the Internet to acquire your content for as much or as little as you are willing to pay -- the content you acquire may be free, but you still have to pay to have it delivered.

So the content you acquire from your ISP doesn't count against your cap? That just means they are offering "free delivery". What's to prevent Amazon or Netflix from offering "free delivery" with their products -- nothing at all. I suspect that will come too and be incorporated into the price of their product.

So the bottom line is, if you currently have cable or FIOS you are paying for both "content" and "delivery of content". It's just that your bill is not broken down as line items so you don't realize it. The "new" Internet model of content delivery is the same -- you pay a fee for the content and you pay a fee to have it delivered. Only now the separate fees are transparent and smacking you in the face, saying "it's gonna be different, you will have different choices, more choices, but it's not necessarily gonna be cheaper."

This is basically moving towards tollbooths for every road. The companies providing internet access collect every time something passes by.

It has been a raging battle up here in Canada for quite some time. Should the cap folks prevail, and they probably will, the internet will become a far less interesting place. Mind you, that will be the true market approach to the issue. I am surprised they haven't applied it to local phone calls over landlines. It's probably not worth their time.

The whole thing is in the spirit of tollbooths. I can't imagine a more unappealing approach to the "information highway".

philip

I understand peoples' discontent at having to pay for something they previously received for "free". But let's be real, nothing is free. Using your road/tollbooth analogy, are roads free? Obviously not. You pay for them either by discrete toll when you travel them or through your taxes, whether you travel them or not. A two lane road is fine until the traffic on it exceeds the capacity to the point where the congestion is unbearable. Then extra lanes have to be built on to increase capacity -- that's certainly not free, someone has to pay for it.

The Internet is a delivery service like the Post Office or UPS. You mail a letter or package and you pay a delivery fee based on the weight of the item you are sending and how fast you want it to get there. The model is already there, it's just a matter of setting a price structure.

So tell me. Why are people so willing to pay a lot extra for increased download speed (over-nite express delivery), but think it so unreasonable to be expected to pay for increased quantity delivered (package weight).

FWIW....stopped by my local AT&T branch yesterday and had a [short] conversation about the caps. They did confirm with me that the business class model of U-verse will not have caps. Might be worth looking into to.

Just a note, nobody got anything for free. People paid a set amount each month to use the companies bandwidth. That is NOT free by any stretch.

Because if you look at the state of the art and what other countries are doing you'll see that the US ISPs are making a conscientious choice not to provide competitive value in terms of price/speed or price/quantity.

We are not the worst, but leave a lot to be desired - here is just one source Internet Speeds and Costs.

To use your analogy, if UPS charged 10x as much to deliver the same package at the same speed vs. Fedex (see US vs. Japan, S. Korea, Sweden,... in the above link), but UPS was your only option, would you not be asking yourself whether you were in a particularly good situation, and possibly have a few complaints?

All it simply boils down to is greed.AT&T is nothing more than a monopoly money grubbing machine.Also for those interested take a look at dslreports the s/w that AT&T is beta testing to monitor b/w doesn't even work right.AT&T's customer service in our area which used to be bellsouth is a flat out joke!The sad part is there isn't many if any alternatives. I have been looking for other dsl providers for 2 yrs and so far the only one that offers it besides AT&T is earthlink.ATM earthlink has no plans to cap the service so they may be an option for others as well.

I don't have much of an issue with caps but 150Gb for DSl is weak at best,they should at least set it comparably to comcast at 250GB.

Do you have the option to buy unlimited access (that is, as much bandwidth as your heart desires)?

I agree with Kelson that this was inevitable, but I would at least still want the option to use as much bandwidth as I wanted. Is the government up there imposing a cap, or are companies doing what AT&T is doing (you can still download an unlimited amount, but you'll have to pay a premium)?

Well I don't think everything can or should be metered. Would you suggest charging people for reading more? Do you think people who walk on sidewalks or cycle should pay by the distance they travel? What about TV? If I subscribe to cable then should I pay more for watching more?

Some things are free, some things are not, etc ... Life is surely not about being controlled by the latest fad in economics. Those who would have us pay for every last activity are a menace.

If the internet were simply a vehicle for commercial activity then I think the mail delivery analogy would be quite appropriate. But it has become a lot of different things. Perhaps there should be two internets. One for commercial use, governed by the tollbooth mentality, and the other a convenient library of information, ideas, debate, etc... .

philip

Well the debate is not over. As far as I know you cannot get unlimited internet on any major provider in Canada. You used to and people who have those accounts have been fortunate. There are smaller ISP's that offer unlimited internet though their continued ability to do that depends on what happens with the UBB (usage based billing) debate.

The government hasn't imposed anything. Unfortunately, access to the net is controlled by a few large companies with conflicting interests.

Up until a year ago you could still pay a premium to get unlimited downloads on Bell Canada ( like AT&T). You still can in a way but the cost would be $2/gig up to 300gigs - plan ( plans are 25 to 75 gigs). The max would be $60 over the regular cost. After 300 gigs it is $1/gig with no upper bound.

So in a sense you can get unlimited, but at $1/gig. The speeds keep going up and the caps going down...

philip

What this says to me is that your infrastructure is simply not capable of handling the jump in traffic. The real issue that probably lies below the surface is that your infrastructure needs to be built out to support the increasing demands. The users of the service ultimately have to pay for it and so perhaps "the debate" is how to spread the cost in the most equitable manner.

The point is the users already have. The ISPs could have been taking the money they are overcharging for current service and applied it to infrastructure upgrades, but chose not to.

Are you a Comcast, TWC, or AT&T employee btw?

Don't start that. Spouting crap like that when you can't argue a point you disagree with will drop your credibility like a stone.

what are a few good bandwidth usage monitoring tools we can use?

I have cox communications and they have caps, so I switched to a business line. Its about $20 a month more, all my ports are open, I get top tier tech support (not that I need it) and its unlimited.

Can I ask what your download speed is?