AT&T to try limiting subscribers’ data use

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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