Mar 30, 2011
AT&T has placed a cap on the internet usage of its subscribers. For all of those people who stream video or play online games, there may be overage charges if they exceed their monthly internet limit. According to Matt Buchanan’s Gizmodo.com article “AT&T Monthly Bandwidth Caps are Here” this all started last November in Reno, Nevada.
In Reno AT&T started a market trial. During this market trial, AT&T placed a cap on the amount of internet usage a customer can use per month, based on the speed of internet service that customer subscribed for.
These data limits went from 50 gigabytes to 150 gigabytes for customers depending on what tier of service they signed up for. If a person exceeded the limits placed on their plan they were given a one month grace period, but after that, if they exceeded their usage yet again, they were charged roughly a dollar per gigabyte.
On March 2, this concept of placing a cap on internet usage went from being a limited market trial to a full-blown national AT&T internet policy.
According to the Wired.com article by Ryan Singel “AT&T Puts Broadband Users on Monthly Allowance,” Derek Turner, the research director of the net neutrality advocacy group Free Press, said: “When ISPs force their customers to watch the meter, experimentation, innovation and business will suffer.”
Derek Turner also goes on to say that AT&T is either a company that is trying to make even more of a profit or just a company that used to be primarily a phone company that has an outdated business plan and is hindering the limitless potential of the internet.
To the end user, the average citizen, this could mean expensive monthly overage charges and having to place a limit on the amount of internet you use. Some of the biggest information hogs, according to Ryan Singel of Wired magazine, are streaming video, bit torrents and online games.  According to Derek Turner however, even those who don’t use these types of data intensive online services will eventually be affected due to ever the evolving internet and its ever increasing data usage.
