Caps for ATT DSL and Uverse

[Bebop]

150GB for DSL and 250GB for U-verse

http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Exclusive-ATT-To-Impose-Caps-Overages-113149

TW might not be far away. I will switch if TW is less than 250GB

[Xizer]

Yep. I'm switching back to TWC. Not putting up with this trash.

[TPK]

What good will 20Mbps do if your going to be capped at the same level as someone with 6Mbps???  All that means is youll incurr extra charges approx. 3 times faster....

250GB sounds like a lot (and it is), but at some point the caps will be used as a way to tier out customers and create another profit center..

"How about we create a 100GB cap next week, and price it below the 250GB cap price, and then customers can choose the 100GB cap price point and save money...  But THEN, a few months later, lets raise the 100GB cap price to where the 250GB cap price was, and the 250GB cap to a higher price point (moving all those folks that didn't opt for the 100GB cap to a higher price point by default), thus giving the users the illusion of choice, when really all we are doing is finding another way to gouge"

Implement a 250GB cap today, and it will become just 'accepted' tomorrow, when 250GB will not be enough to use streaming IPTV in a meaningful way (which is really what these combination ISP and TV content providers are going for)...   Then implement higher price points on the high-cap broadband so that consumers are forced to use your IPTV services instead of your competition..

Remember, this market for broadband is basically a monopoly (or some would say a duopoly) between TWC and AT&T, which also happen to be your TV content providers...  Any arguments for the caps based on there being a free market, and consumer ability to make a choice are pretty much void..  These companies can just do what they want to squealch their competition (read: Netflix, Hulu, Vonage, and others), and there is basically nothing that we, the consumer can do about it really, other than not having broadband service at all, which for a lot of us isn't even an option either...

AT&T says that they need to do this to keep their costs low for the majority of their subscribers??  That if they don't do this they'll be forced to raise rates because their infrastrucutre is being pushed beyond its capacity, and there is not enough cash flow to keep up with the demand???  Fine...  I'll believe that when they prove it..

Untill then, as far as I'm concerned, they are full of BS...   BUT, there is nothing I can do about it other than complain I guess...

[Gregg Lengling]

I've been off the last couple weeks so I haven't been in the office, but will be going back on Thursday.  Then I'll get the whole scoop and find out if it affects me (having an employee account maybe I'll get a break).  And this is when I was getting ready to drop all the extra channels on the satellite and go to streaming video from Netflix...oh well you win and you lose.

[oz]

I don't know if RoadRunner has an official cap, but you'll get a warning letter if you download too much in one month.  If you pay an extra $10/month for RR Turbo then they seem let you download as much as you want.

[WPXE ION]

Just curious why someone would need such high bandwidth??? My TV at home has built in wireless and I have RR lite, the lowest bandwidth. When streaming video to the TV I never see glitches. unless your are streaming 10 computers at the same time I dont see any reason for the high-cap bandwidth.

Just my opinion though. :wave:

[Xizer]

I don't know if RoadRunner has an official cap, but you'll get a warning letter if you download too much in one month.  If you pay an extra $10/month for RR Turbo then they seem let you download as much as you want.

I downloaded over 2 TB/month when I had Road Runner with no problems.

Just curious why someone would need such high bandwidth??? My TV at home has built in wireless and I have RR lite, the lowest bandwidth. When streaming video to the TV I never see glitches. unless your are streaming 10 computers at the same time I dont see any reason for the high-cap bandwidth.

Just my opinion though. :wave:

Some of us actually appreciate high video and audio quality and don't like watching video over the Internet that looks like it is straight out of the 1960's.

If there were bandwidth caps a decade ago and idiots were defending this corporate greed "b-b-but using 1 GB of data a month is outrageous!!!" we'd never have services like YouTube and Netflix like we do today.

This is going to kill future web innovation and future high quality services.

[ArgMeMatey]

Just curious why someone would need such high bandwidth??? My TV at home has built in wireless and I have RR lite, the lowest bandwidth. When streaming video to the TV I never see glitches. unless your are streaming 10 computers at the same time I dont see any reason for the high-cap bandwidth.

When I was on AT&T DSL 3 Mbps I would never get HD on Netflix.  The net available is more like 2500, I think, without the overhead included.  

I switched to 6 Mbps and now usually get HD unless we are running two streams at a time - and I know we can run three simultaneous streams on Netflix.  Of course, more content is now available in HD.  So I can't prove causation.  

Our monthly traffic is highly variable.  We use YouTube, Netflix and Blockbuster streaming frequently and have run to right around 250.  But for example last month was only about 100.  

My wife does a fair amount of streaming to her iPhone via WiFi at home, so when this starts I will probably set her phone to "forget" our WiFi networks and she can watch via 3G since she's got no cap there.  Yet.

I'm not planning to make any changes at the moment but I'm keeping track of monthly usage and I will re-evaluate Time Warner and any other options before my AT&T contract is up in June.