The insignificance of a 250 GB usage cap
Now that AT&T is following the footsteps of Comcast by instituting a 250 GB per month usage cap on their broadband service (150 GB for slower DSL customers), much of the outcry from the blogosphere aren’t justified by the facts. These caps are large enough that they are irrelevant to 98% of the subscribers, and the average AT&T DSL subscriber transfers a mere 18 GBs per month. For the few subscribers affected by the usage cap, overage charges will be waved the first two months a subscriber exceeds the usage cap so they have ample warning to either trim their usage or pay for the extra usage. Subscribers who ignore three usage notifications and exceed their usage cap a third time will be charged $10 per 50 GB over.
For most broadband subscribers, it may be difficult to correlate GBs to what they actually want to do on the Internet. For the vast majority of people, video download or streaming are the main applications that could trigger an overage charge. The following tables illustrate what broadband subscribers can do with a 250 GB usage, and it’s a lot. Much of Netflix’s content isn’t available at the higher bitrates and probably average below 2 Mbps. Even at the highest quality levels, users can use Netflix an average of 4.6 hours every day.
Despite the fact that these usage caps only apply to some extremely heavy users and have plenty of warning notifications, Karl Bode is still concerned for the future and said:
“the heavy user of today is inevitably the standard user of tomorrow”
There’s no doubt that future broadband subscribers will use a lot more GBs, but what makes Mr. Bode so sure that future usage caps will remain stagnant as usage patterns go up? If the goal of these usage caps is to manage the heaviest 2% of users, it won’t affect the majority today or tomorrow.
I’m impressed by their overage fee structure. $10/50GB over seems very fair to consumers. You don’t see that very often.
[...] do, which is of course completely unfair, which is why AT&T isn’t allowing it. Anyway, the rate caps aren’t that small, and $10 per 50GB over isn’t bad at all. Ask any wireless Internet user what you’ll get [...]
[...] [...]
Leave your response!
Twitter Feed
About Us
Digital Society is a digital think tank that believes culture and commerce are inseparable, that the digital economy flourishes when people are free and rights are secure, and that free markets free people.
Digital Society is an independent 501(c)3 non-profit organization, funded by donations from Jon Henke and from Arts+Labs. We advocate for a pro-culture, pro-commerce digital society through research, analysis and debate on emerging technology issues.
Reply Comments
Transparency and interactivity are trademarks of the Internet era, and we aim to foster them here at Digital Society. It is inevitable that some people will disagree with the technology policy positions we take. We want to have that constructive debate.
The Reply Comments feature gives our critics a chance to respond to our viewpoints and the Digital Society audience convenient access to competing arguments. Any time we directly challenge the views of an individual or a group on this site, the party in question may substantively respond in a guest post.
Please contact executive director Jon Henke by e-mail.
Subscribe
Recent Posts