In a familiar move repeated more and more lately all over the industry, AT&T decides to screw their customers again by imposing new data caps on their DSL service. The new limits are 150GB for the standard DSL service while the U-verse broadband customers will see a slightly larger cap at 250GB of data each month.
The new policy will be launched targeting the heavy users. It won’t be as definitive as other ISP plans and allow you to go over the limit three times before you are charged an extra fees. You’ll also get notifications when you ate through 65 percent, 90 percent or through the whole monthly subscription limit and the extra data will be sold in chunks of 50GB for $10 each chunk.
While AT&T explains their move by pretending that only 2 percent of their customers will be affected and that it is for the good of many since those 2 percent of customers that are heavy users negatively impact the download speeds experienced by everybody else, let’s see how true is this claim and how it might affect you.
While you might not be a heavy user (heavy following AT&T current definition) now, consider this: Services like Netflix / Hulu easily eat through 1-2GB of data per hour, especially if you are watching high definition movies. If you already / plan to cut the cable cord, most of your home video watching will be online and in a normal household with 1-2 kids watching several streams at the same time is not unheard of – that could eat up to 10GB data / day. If you like to record your children activities, you might use various online back-up alternatives and depending on your usage, more gigabytes will be added to the bill. Currently, HD camcorders sell for a dime a dozen and HD content really eats up space / traffic.
If you also download software and games online, own an XBOX 360 or a PS3 and want some demo’s once in a while, consider that modern games are also several GB in size, even for the trials.
This is not all…As network infrastructure evolves, Netflix / Hulu video streaming service will be upgraded to 1080p, similar to what VUDU HDX offers, a single movie will need around 8GB of data. Should I mention 3D ? VUDU already offers 3D movies for rent. So you see, AT&T really invests for the future. It is just not your future, it is theirs. And while you might consider the move won’t affect you now, consider how your own internet habits changed in the last five years. Next year it might be you in those two percent of heavy users, together with the other 98 percent.
