Tuesday, March 15, 2011

AT&T sets monthly limits on broadband use

We have heard about this before possibly coming.

Looking at the usage AT&T is saying to reach 150 gigabyte I should not exceed the limit.

To exceed the 150-gigabyte cap, you would have to stream 10 high-definition movies a month, watch 100 hour long online television shows, stream 5,000 one-minute YouTube videos and upload several thousand photos to social media sites, according to AT&T.

That sure seems like a lot to me; but once it’s set up, who knows how fast it will/can change!

Using the analogy of the water meter it does make sense, to me. I guess we will have to wait and see.

AT&T DSL

7 comments:

kkdither said...

Everything is going up, except wages. More and more, the extras that we have come to expect, might be priced out of our limits. Covering the basics will become challenging.

Looking at what is happening overseas, though, things could be worse....

SER said...

KK, you must have been reading my mind; I was thinking of all the kids who have the fancy cell phones that connect to the internet and all the iTouch pads or what ever they call them.

All of a sudden people will be dropping their contracts because of price and they’ll be stuck with all these fancy gadgets piling up in dresser drawers!

OrbsCorbs said...

The fairest thing would be a water meter type deal: you only pay for what you use. Right now, everyone pays the same rate no matter how much or little they use. The same thing with cable TV. I have to pay for a ton of channels I never watch in order to receive the ones I want. Again, only charge me for what I use. Of course, the cable companies get obscenely rich on these deals and only squawk when their profits are nibbled at.

Fine, charge more for those who go over the limit, but then also reimburse those who stay well under it. Ha ha, imagine that, fair pricing. That will never happen.

hale-bopp said...

150GB is okay for most people now, but data usage will go up as more people stream and that might not seem so generous in a few years. If many people bump up against caps, that will stifle innovation in IT (information technologies for those not in the biz) and be a drag on economic growth.

The U.S. is pretty pathetic in terms of the availability, price and speed of broadband internet. Obama's initiatives for improved broadband access have been criticized by conservatives for for being government interference in markets and people like me for setting a goal of building out our internet infrastructure by 2020 to the level South Korea enjoys today. We should be trying to pass them, not be nine years behind them!

OrbsCorbs said...

I agree about our internet infrastructure. How can we lag the world in educational and technological areas and still expect to be leaders?

kkdither said...

Sort of like drug dealers.... make it affordable until you get hooked. I don't want to have to limit my internet usage. I've become too addicted to it.

I am amazed at what people are willing to pay each month to walk around with a phone permanently attached to their palm.

Tender Heart Bear said...

I was looking into that because I wanted to combine the cell phone, house phone, internet and cable all together and then I found something else cheaper. They also said for the internet I would have to be with out it for 7 days. I told them to forget it.