Korean Job Discussion Forums

[bassexpander]

http://www.afterdawn.com/news/archive/15872.cfm

Just one month after Comcast began imposing a bandwidth cap of 250 GB on all of its subscribers, AT&T has begun testing a cap of their own, however with a much smaller limit, 150 GB.

The cap will have tiers as well depending on how fast your connection is, slower users will only get 20 GB limit while the fastest users will get the 150 GB cap.

The test, beginning in Reno, Nevada today, will "evaluate a usage-based model that could potentially help address today's trend of explosive bandwidth usage, [and] may be extended to one other market by the end of the year," said AT&T.

Anyone in Reno who uses over 150 GB per month will automatically be enrolled in the full bandwidth trial at the end of the year.

Any trial participant that exceeds the limit will be given a one-month grace period but if they do it again they will be fined $1 for every GB over they go.

Unlike Comcast however, AT&T will provide all customers with a "bandwidth measuring tool" and will also notify customers when they have hit 80 percent of their limit.

"A small group of customers are using the majority of bandwidth on our network," added AT&T. "In fact, almost 50 percent of total bandwidth is used by just five percent of customers � customers, for example, who are uploading and downloading the equivalent of more than 40,000 YouTube videos or 40 million e-mails a month. This kind of heavy usage has an impact on all of our customers."

[sojourner1]

I know my bandwidth is very high due to (illegally) downloading movies and TV shows. Well, I don't see any DVD's for rent, but I used to use mail rental DVD services such as Netflix at home instead of relying on torrents as DVD's offer higher video quality. I can't think of any other reason why broadband users would have such explosive bandwidth.

Of course bandwidth is how many gigabytes of data is going through a website or internet connection. The more bandwidth demanded, the more servers and satellite COM necessary to handle the excessive data traffic. If servers are inadequate to handle the load at any time, then internet speeds slow down. Often, internet providers at home don't have enough servers or have too many subscribers on one server so speed get ridiculously slow in the evenings, sometimes to a halt of waiting for a browser to load a page.

[DCJames]

It was only a matter of time before the greedy telecoms made a move to over-regulate Internet usuage. Gone are the days of freely downloading as many movies / music / games as you wanted just for the sake of having a large collection.

[OneWayTraffic]

[livinginkunsan]

[Bigfeet]

How much bandwidth would playing an hour of WoW use?

[egrog1717]

[ChinaBoy]

I don't understand why they can't just offer an "unlimited" package for a monthly fee. Fines and penalties are just ridiculous, and definitely NOT consumer-friendly.

[DCJames]

[Temporary]

Actually Telecoms haven't been improving their service. It has relatively stayed the same level or gotten worse. Telecoms haven't improved their lines, or speeds on their lines. American telecoms are really bad for that. I had a friend from telus go down to Florida after a hurricane to help restore the lines and he said the stuff they were using were over 40-50years old.

This is where the whole thing of Net Neutrality comes into play. Telecoms would love to the same to the internet as they have done with their cellphone networks.

[Bigfeet]

[bassexpander]

They can't offer unlimited because a small percentage of users are eating up most of the bandwidth. If they offered unlimited, nothing would change.

[Juregen]

[DCJames]

[Bigfeet]

By the way, the thread's subject is wrong. They're capping usage at different price points, not throttling bandwidth. High-usage customers will need to do their own throttling or face being charged more.

This is equivalent to making the product smaller and selling it at the same price vs. keeping the size the same and bumping up the price. So going one way will make them more money directly while going the other way will let them save more money. If you can't make more money then the next best thing is to save money.