Internet Usage Caps on the Way

AT&T and Time Warner are both ready to institute usage-based fees for heavy internet users. Ostensibly, 5% of users use over half the bandwidth provided each month. Comcast is also on the edge of monitoring its users.

NEW YORK (AP) - AT&T Inc., the country's largest Internet provider, is considering charging extra for customers who download

large amounts of data.

"A form of usage-based pricing for those customers who have abnormally high usage patterns is inevitable," spokesman Michael Coe said this week.

The top 5 percent of AT&T's DSL customers use 46 percent of the total bandwidth, Coe said. Overall bandwidth use on the network is surging, doubling every year and a half.

AT&T doesn't have any specific plans or fees to announce yet, Coe said.

Most cable companies have official or secret caps on the amount of data they allow subscribers to download every month. Time Warner Cable started a trial earlier this month in Beaumont, Texas, under which it will charge subscribers who go over their monthly bandwidth cap $1 per gigabyte.

There's more at the link above and also at Shack News.

Thanks Ten Ton Hammer for the heads up. This is an important issue and of great interest to MMO players.

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Well up here in Canada, most of the ISPs put a bandwith cap on their internet access and it doesn't really change much for the MMORPG fans as it uses a very low bitrate exchange both in upload and download. The cap is mostly for people using Peer to Peer aplications to exchange files between one and each others.

Unlimited internet access is very expensive here and not all of the ISPs offer unlimited access.

Blah,more boundries and control :P