Starting Monday...Bandwidth Caps begin with AT&T (and won't stop there)

[Larry_OHF]

http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/...roadband-caps/

It will become a game of who has the highest cap on who will have the most customers. Right now, Time Warner Cable has no cap. They're the clear winner at the moment.

[SpiritWarrior]

Horrible. I need to call and find out the fine details of it all. While most casual users will never hit this cap, anyone with Netflix, iTunes or even heavy Youtube users will now have another thing they must keep an eye on. Not to mention MMO's or any kind of online gaming. I use all of the above, so I am gonna be watching it like a hawk. Online games are actually pretty light in terms of bandwidth...but then, this depends on how long you play. I know people who play WoW all night. I log on and they're still online.

Streaming HD movies from Netflix are easily 3-6 gigs a pop, and this is just to take advantage of your Netflix subscription. Let's say you want to treat youtself and you buy a HD season of your favorite TV series from iTunes, that's like 40gig all at once - almost a third of your monthly allowance. Buy the first 4 seasons of say, Enterprise, and you are capped already. If you upload at all (even to sites like Youtube), this is figured into your cap also. Hosting a server from your home? Watch your back.

Shed a tear indeed, the day of capping has arrived. Let's see if Timewarner follows suit because really, if every ISP gets stoically on board with this plan, they will all benefit. Although I would like to think competition has its benefits. As always I imagine there will be one company that offers better or no caps, in an attempt to lure customers in. Still, it's annoying though.

[Firestormalpha]

Will majority of consumers jump to Time Warner where available? Will such an event send a message to providers who have applied the cap system? Will Time Warner wait until such a jump and then impose a cap once they've secured all the fleeing consumers? It's a pretty lousy system. And far from expanding caps as technology and graphics progress, I'm sure they'll look for ways to ratchet it down.

It's almost 2 months out of date, but here's an article that turned up in my searching: here

From what I gather Comcast is a part of Time Warner Cable. Comcast is planning to begin imposing data caps of it's own starting in October.

Straight from Comcast's Website: here They are planning on a cap of 250GB.

Between ATT and Comcast I'd go with Comcast. The fact that the landlord works for Comcast doesn't hurt either.

[ElfBane]

What REALLY sux is that in many parts of Florida (and the US in general) there is no competition among cable companies. You do have a choice: Cable, DSL or Satellite. I would like to see county governments allow at least two cable companies. And I wish that Verizon would keep expanding FIOS, but I guess they have stopped.

[SpiritWarrior]

Time warner is very expensive atm, which is why I avoid. While I think I will be annoyed with the cap, I think I will be okay. They need to make it 250 though - like comcast. Worst comes to worst, I switch to a business package with AT&T, which apparently has no caps. Even this is cheaper than me getting Time Warner - it's just not worth the money for the speed imo.

[Larry_OHF]

Originally Posted by SpiritWarrior - it's just not worth the money for the speed imo.

It depends. We're installing IP cameras in my business and we tell people they should have an upload range of at least 1.5Mbps. Best is 3.0Mbps. Otherwise the camera feed will be choppy or unusable. The only people that have a smooth stream are the Time Warner customers. I've not seen anyone else have a comparible stream.

[SpiritWarrior]

Originally Posted by Larry_OHF It depends. We're installing IP cameras in my business and we tell people they should have an upload range of at least 1.5Mbps. Best is 3.0Mbps. Otherwise the camera feed will be choppy or unusable. The only people that have a smooth stream are the Time Warner customers. I've not seen anyone else have a comparible stream.

Well, that's for businesses sure - if they are using cameras for surveillance or conferencing etc. they would need such high uploads to assure quality of sound/image and high framerates. With IP cams if you miss a single frame, someone could be in the door while you are waiting for the feed to refresh.

I have around 1.5 upstream with AT&T DSL and it costs me a fraction of what TW would cost me. For what I do, I am fixated on download speeds as I don't utilize upstream enough to warrant such a price jump. Unless I was hosting a traffic-heavy server like I used to, or doing 4-way video conferences daily with clients, it just isn't justified.

[Memnoch]

Well from when I was still living in Sydney it was like this for us - except our cap was 3GB. Plus we got dinged for downloads AND uploads.

[SpiritWarrior]

Yeah, I know Aus and Canada are bad for caps. Every ISP caps there as a general rule right? 3gb is nuts, but then I assume that was back in the day when 3gb was ALOT. Imagine they have upped that to cater to the Youtube/Netflix world. There was a time when we couldn't fathom STREAMING something in HD.

[Felix The Assassin]

Foul, encroachment, how dare these companies do this to you!