AT&T to try limiting subscribers' data use

AT&T customers who obsessively play World of Warcraft while downloading dozens of movies: your days of online impunity may be numbered. AT&T has joined the ranks of telecom companies exploring the idea of limiting the amount of their data subscribers can use each month.

The company began this month to apply such limits, testing the policy first in Reno, Nev. Subscribers to AT&T's slowest Internet service there will be limited to downloading 20 gigabytes of data per month. Those who subscribe to the fastest plan will be able to download up to 150 gigabytes per month. Anyone who goes over the limit will pay $1 per extra gigabyte of data downloaded.

AT&T joins the ranks of Comcast, Time Warner Cable and FairPoint Communications, which are planning their own limits. Comcast began capping Internet use in October and said it would suspend service of customers who exceed the company's 250-gigabytes-per-month limit after repeated warnings.

"Some type of usage-based model, for those customers who have abnormally high usage patterns, seems inevitable," AT&T spokesman John Britton said. "A small group of customers are using the majority of bandwidth on our network."

Half of AT&T's total bandwidth is used by 5% of customers, Britton said.

Most customers don't come close to needing 250 gigabytes a month, but that may change as telecommunications companies offer faster and faster service that makes it easier for customers to download movies, music and other files. Netflix is encouraging users to download movies through its website, for example, rather than waiting for discs to arrive in the mail.

Downloading a full-length standard movie requires about 2 gigabytes, according to Comcast. The website StoptheCap says that a 5-gigabyte cap limits customers to watching 500 minutes of YouTube videos per month or downloading 1,000 songs from iTunes, but once you do either of those things, you won't have enough bandwidth to read your e-mail.

For more information on just how much (or how little) you can download with the caps, you can also check out this cheat-sheet from Silicon Alley Insider. Or you can stop worrying about how many movies you'll be able to download if AT&T decides to cap data use in L.A., and go buy a VCR while you still can. Then you'll be able to watch as many videos as you want.

-- Alana Semuels

Photo: This statue is capped, too. Credit: Artiii via Flickr

Comments

[Tomas Edwards]

Well written story, if 5% of the users take 50% of the bandwidth, then these bandwidth hogs should pay more. Internet bandwidth is a finite resource. It's similar to any utility, electricity, water etc. the more I use, the more I pay. Lets have the big users pay more to hopefully justify building a bigger and faster internet for us all. As it stands now they are slowing down the system for all of us, sounds pretty selfish to me.

[tucanofulano]

At&T again showing monopolistic crookedness thru 1)bait and switch, and 2) breach of contract

[LongShot]

Well, this wouldn't be a big deal if it weren't for the problem that ATT probably isn't going to reinvest their new profits back into better network performance or better technology. I have DSL with them and wish I could get Verizon FIOS instead; ATT is stuck on older technology and isn't capable of upgrading its' network performance. Now they want to throttle everyone down by fee which is fine if they would upgrade their network but they won't because they want to pay their shareholders. Since they've reintegrated as ATT (instead of PacBell or SBC or whatever), I think the quality of their circuits has actually degraded.
Here, in Los Angeles, they have a monopoly but because the FCC is basically corporatized and can't enforce anything (except obscenities) and doesn't have an original thought in its' collectively puny minds, there's nothing to bust ATTs' chops with. For that matter, the same goes for Time Warner and its' weak little cable network. Furthermore, the LA City and County governments are so poorly educated in technology and the politicans so engrained in protecting their little piece of turf, that they have little to no interest in better managing the network apportionments they hand out to TimeWarner, ATT, etc. They are totally inadequately trained to understand how to actually get these entities to improve service to the citizens or to even improve the governments bottom line when they charge fees to ATT etc. Pathetic.

[Nolongera Customer]

And that is precisely why they no longer have my business. Not only internet, but not phone, long distance, and soon to change at my business too.

Have a home office, and transfer lots of data back and forth to work? Then RUN from these idiots.

And why exactly does anyone want them measuring usage, having this data collected and doing whatever they like with it? No thanks.
Wouldn't agree to this even for free. Comcast would have to pay ME to use their services...now same with AT&T.

[Nolongera Customer]

And that is precisely why they no longer have my business. Not only internet, but not phone, long distance, and soon to change at my business too.

Have a home office, and transfer lots of data back and forth to work? Then RUN from these idiots.

And why exactly does anyone want them measuring usage, having this data collected and doing whatever they like with it? No thanks.
Wouldn't agree to this even for free. Comcast would have to pay ME to use their services...now same with AT&T.

[longshot]

BTW, all of us US technology customers should understand that we as a nation are not exactly the bleeding edge of technology when it comes to networking or wireless phone systems. There are a number of countries that have far better wireless systems and a few that have better network penetration. Our advantage is that we have had tech companies in Silicon Valley pushing the envelope so that the general public gets to enjoy the "Internet" which was , btw, developed by (surprise) the government (specifically DARPA). It wasn't invented by ATT, Al Gore, or any corporations. It wasn't invented by free enterprise in general. As a matter of fact, it was a bunch of technical wonks and government scientists who did it. So when a bunch of corporations start saying they need to charge more, the public and its elected representatives should really start asking why and what for. Instead we get the FCC whining about bad words.
We should be getting 100Gb network access at residential drops, not at the LECs. How the heck can ATT, TimeWarner, etc. expect people to buy into modern IP services like movie downloading or even streaming with capped limits like 150 GB. Do they really expect that people will be doing less in the future with web connections? I imagine NetFlix and the studios will love this; I have 4 kids 4-8 yrs of age. That's some tv viewing time there; you can be sure, I'm not enrolling in Netflix. It's silly but I figure that the powers that be will roll over and just ask for more donations to net neutralitys' hired guns in office. Check on Edward Whitacres contributions and those politicians voting records.

[longshot]

Since I'm on a rant, I might as well as complain a little more about ATT. I've been a ATT/PacBell DSL customer since about 1996. It seems every year, I get a bunch of sales calls from ATT call centers about getting DSL. Hmmm, I'm in your cursed database, aren't I? I seem to get regular bills every month so I must be in there. So why are you calling me? Is it possible that your sales teams isn't getting good data from your internal customer databases? Or are they asking for the wrong data or are they just plain dopes? Or is it that ATT hires the wrong call centers or sends them the wrong data? Could it be that ATT as a giant corporate entity isn't very efficient and doesn't know how to spend its' money? If they're so eager to spend so much on sales calls, could they maybe spend a little more time and attention on getting clean data for NEW customers to annoy with DSL sales calls instead of EXISTING customers who don't need to be bothered by said calls. Or gee maybe they could upgrade(?) some of their gear so I wouldn't have to power down my modem every day. It amazes me that simple sales call data can't be scrubbed properly of existing internal customers; it's not rocket science. I've done it and did it years ago with millions of data points; it's not impossible or even difficult. You just need some decent developers and sales guys who know to ask and answer the right questions. Apparently, ATT can't do that. BUT they sure can raise your prices and fees and cripple your service.