AT&T Broadband Subscribers Don Their Data Caps Today
AT&T Broadband Subscribers Don Their Data Caps Today
Posted 05/02/2011 at 7:12am
| by Paul Lilly
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Fair warning for anyone who consumes a ton of bandwidth, ISPs are watching, and if you're an AT&T broadband subscriber, starting today the mandatory dress code calls for a data cap to be worn. DSLs users must squeeze into a 150GB cap every month, and if that's not enough, be ready to fork over $10 for every 50GB over that limit. U-verse users get a little more wiggle room to play with and are capped at 250GB per month. Should you be worried, or does this only affect out-of-control BitTorrent users clogging up the pipelines?
Unfortunately, AT&T's timing really sucks. We're at a point where streaming media is just starting to take off, with services like Netflix, Hulu, HBO GO / MAX GO, and the list goes on. If you or someone in your household is a movie buff, that seemingly spacious 150GB cap might be tighter than you think.
As The Huffington Post points out, watching a single streaming high-definition movie consumes about 2GB per hour, while standard definition movies typically range anywhere from 0.3GB per hour to 1GB per hour. Throw in game downloads, cloud services, and everything else you use your Internet connection for, and it's easy to see how even average users could pop out of their data caps.
If it comes as any consolation, AT&T maintains that the caps will only affect about 2 percent of its DSL subscribers, claiming that the average person goes through just 18GB per month.
Do you think 150GB/month is enough?
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Brechan
May 04, 2011 at 3:34am
" If it comes as any consolation, AT&T maintains that the caps will only affect about 2 percent of its DSL subscribers, claiming that the average person goes through just 18GB per month."
This is exactly the same crap excuse that the big telecoms here in Canada used when they decided to not only apply caps to their packages, but to try to enforce these same standards on the (smaller) independant ISP's.
It wasn't until nearly 500,000 people cried foul to the Canadian government, that our Canadian Radio-television Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) finally reversed its decision in supporting these caps and the big telecoms
http://gisuck.tumblr.com/post/3472789787/the-real-truth-about-usage-based-billing-in-canada
SteveMann
May 03, 2011 at 8:49pm
"Unfortunately, AT&T's timing really sucks. We're at a point where streaming media is just starting to take off, with services like Netflix, Hulu, HBO GO / MAX GO, and the list goes on. If you or someone in your household is a movie buff, that seemingly spacious 150GB cap might be tighter than you think."
Well, DUH - this is precisely why the ISP's are imposing a data cap. Note that if you buy your content through [your ISP] then the data caps do not apply. It's an end-run around Net Neutrality.
sarkli
May 03, 2011 at 4:16pm
"Unfortunately, AT&T's timing really sucks. We're at a point where streaming media is just starting to take off, with services like Netflix, Hulu, HBO GO / MAX GO, and the list goes on."
Nope actually it doesnt suck.. at least not for AT&T. Think about this a moment.. i personally can see in the next 10-15 years pretty much everything done on the internet, everything from; radio, television, movies, local news, shopping, working from home, gaming and the list goes on. Yes these things are being done now but as the older generations(the ones who dont quite 'get it') keep getting older and all of us 'modern' computer users grow in numbers the internet will be even more of a focal point in our lives and imo companies putting a cap on bandwidth like this only proves to me how greedy they are and how something that was invented to be 'free for the world' is being grossly abused by charging absurd amounts, which if history says anything, will only become worse. I personally use AT&T and aftter July i will be done with them and changing services simply because of this.
zeroibis
May 03, 2011 at 10:07am
For those of us that work from home you can easily hit over 500gb when you combined the bandwidth from work with your normal traffic.
Just yesterday I had to transfer about 15GB of .log files to clear out the current folders for archiving. Sometimes I need to copy entire servers over to my computer to run diagnostics locally and there goes 30GB+ for every server I am debugging.
It may be one thing when, oh I can not watch that movie b/c they cut me off; however, some of us have our livelihoods depending on internet access.
graydiggy
May 03, 2011 at 8:00am
Its funny how this is how I am informed about this. I never got jack shit from att about this. Gonna switch.
franciscomedinav
May 02, 2011 at 6:50pm
HEHEHEHE, CENTURY 21ST AND WE ARE STILL TALKING ABOUT CAPS LIMIT ??????? THIS IS RIDICULOUS !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
ShockerX
May 02, 2011 at 1:19pm
Still undecided on what to do :( Enjoyed the times of unlimited caps with AT&T. Should I go to uverse for the 250 cap, or just switch to comcast? ... Appearently comcast have better speed than uverse.
Danthrax66
May 02, 2011 at 6:22pm
Switch they will get the message, and if you are in a contract this change in the ToS allows you to get out of it.
Blues22475
May 02, 2011 at 12:29pm
I online game alot so if this stuff actually cuts into that I will be quick to switch my ISP. I really don't care how much it will be if I switch over because I will not stand for the capping crap. I pay for the Internet at my home so I will put my money in places better well spent. ATT needs to stop being cheap and expand their networks.
Xyphus
May 02, 2011 at 11:15am
Well, any curiosity I had about cloud services, NetFlix, Hulu, or any other streaming service has been quite nicely dampened... Sure, I may not come near that cap with my normal use, but I'm not going to risk it by adding in any kind of streaming now.
I see this as just one big 'squash' for any of the competitors to AT&T or Cable's own media streaming services...
Eoraptor
May 02, 2011 at 10:15am
Yeah, see... this article points out WHY it's crap-cap. it might not affect the "average" user this moment, but a year from now, a lot more people are going to be bumping up against that cap and AT&T is going to be laughing all the way to the bank.
And the numbers from the huff post don't even address other services such as video/audio chat, online backup/restore, nor online office suites like Office365 and Google Apps. I'd like to see info on how much those utilize, and I know in my case, a single restore session runs pretty heavy, because first it downloads all the old documents and images and whatnot, and then it has to call back to the server to verify them all... so 10-20 gigs is not unusual.
I don't have hard numbers on the data traffic generated by an online office session, but I would like to see those.
And yet, there are still people drinking the koolaide and saying this is all about data pigs abusing the network, the unlimited network they had paid for up until now.
someuid
May 02, 2011 at 8:18am
I'm not on AT&T, or any ISP that is currently limiting download loads.
Does anyone know of a utility you can install on your computer/computers to track monthly download/upload amounts?
I'd be curious.
I would also think a smart Google or NetFlix engineer could write a utility that could do this, and upload the results toa website, stripped of personal data, so the nation can really see what the averages are.
Danthrax66
May 02, 2011 at 6:23pm
A router with DD-WRT will track all data going in and out of a network.
JohnP
May 02, 2011 at 9:51am
Yeah, good question. I wonder if ATT is responsible enough to warn their subscribers that they are over their limit? Nah, it would be like their mobile subscribers getting warnings that they have $1,000 in roaming charges this month. Never happen.
Hamburger
May 02, 2011 at 9:17am
I wouldn't rely on software isntalled on a computer to keep track of your monthly usage. I'd perfer to use routers, such as ones from Netgear, that can keep track of that stuff. Why? Because if you have more than one computer in the house, you need to keep track of the shared usage stats. Also, if that computer, your're using to keep track of usage stats, crashes you just lost your usage info.
Mighty BOB!
May 02, 2011 at 7:23am
I'm on Comcast and I live with two roommates and we pretty much always go over 150 (but so far under 250). Last month we used 164, the month before that I think we used something in the 170-180 range.
lindethier
May 02, 2011 at 7:22am
Makes me happy I ditched AT&T and their crappy services years ago.
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