Ladies and gentlemen, the all-you-can-eat buffet is now closed. After capping wireless data plans without too much uproar, telco AT&T will begin doing the same with DSL and U-verse customers effective May 2.
DSLReports.com is reporting that AT&T will begin implementing data caps on their DSL and U-verse customers beginning on May 2, with terms of service change notices going out March 18 to March 31. After receiving a leaked copy of the company’s plans, the website confirmed the change with AT&T spokesman Seth Bloom.
AT&T DSL customers will now be capped at 150GB per month, while U-verse customers can use up to 250GB per month (presumably because the service includes internet, voice and television, all shared with the same connection). If you exceed those usage caps three times, you’ll be slapped with overages to the tune of $10 for every additional 50GB of data. The overage “three strikes” rule is not per month, but based on your total service usage after the caps kick in on May 2.
Much like the wireless data caps before them, AT&T claims these broadband caps will only affect two percent of their customers. The telco claims that the average DSL customer uses “around 18GB a month,” which means that two percent are consuming “a disproportionate amount of bandwidth.”
AT&T will “proactively notify customers when they exceed 65 percent, 90 percent and 100 percent of the monthly usage allowance,” as well as provide tools for customers to monitor their monthly data usage and even see their historical usage for comparison.
"We are committed to providing a great experience for all of our Internet customers," AT&T claims. "We will communicate early and often with these customers so they are well aware of their options before they incur any additional usage charges. Importantly, we are not reducing the speeds, terminating service or limiting available data like some others in the industry."
While that may be the case, broadband data caps do not bode well for companies such as Hulu, Netflix and even Apple’s own iTunes, who have the potential to gobble up gigabytes of data in just a few hours of watching content -- not to mention, the U.S. still trails far behind other countries where internet speeds are concerned.
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MacAddict4Life
March 14, 2011 at 4:27pm
You know, I'd have less issue with this if it were a peak-usage-hours cap or somesuch, but bandwidth is only about availability at a given moment. Late at night, does it really matter how much you use?
brendentx
March 14, 2011 at 3:01pm
Im not 100% sure on how much data i consume monthly with my uverse account but i would say its quite a bit. I play wow, use netflix as my main source of TV, rent movies with my apple tv maybe 1-2 a week. So this pretty much sucks. As more industries move towards the cloud and more data is accessible this way ISPs need to provide us with the ability to access it unhindered.
TrevorM
March 14, 2011 at 2:05pm
You've got to love a monopoly. If their service goes down, can you get a discount applied to your monthly bill?
Ah, no.
jknowlton
March 14, 2011 at 6:32am
I dont understand why "service providers" that do not own the service, start to throttle usage. CISCO has stated over and over that there is no CAP on data, but the "service providers" do this to make more money than to upgrade their equipment. Its a shame, they will start with this limit, then slowly make it lower and then have more "tiered" plans in order to scam more money.
