Bandwidth Caps – Should You Be Concerned?

ATT made the news late last month announcing that they would begin throttling the top 5% heaviest users of their bandwidth. This, in the wake of a slow but rising tide of reports signaling residential ISPs will also be throttling bandwidth. (Think you’ve got it bad in America? Canada’s got it worse!)

The excuses ISPs use is that these caps are necessary to ensure quality of service to the majority of subscribers. Credible reports dispute ISPs claims of increasing costs.

My concern is the dangerous precedent that is set by setting bandwidth caps.

250GB  seems like alot here in 2011 – but in two years, who is to say you’ll hit that limit a couple/few times a year? Multiply that by millions of subscribers and these caps translate into healthy profit margins for ISPs.

Remember the early days of cell phones – before there were such things as “all you can eat” unlimited plans? And getting a bill at the end of the month, looking at the bottom line – to find it is $40 over what you expect?! No one (except of course for the ISPs) wants to return to the early days of cell phone overages.

But I’m concerned that’s where we’re headed.

You could say “If you don’t like the terms, don’t sign the contract.” But when you can’t get service anywhere without those stipulations, there is no consumer choice. When providers operate as a cartel, it’s not a free market.

At some point, as much as I detest the idea, the government will probably have to step in to regulate and make industry-wide

Whether you believe the ISPs’ claims or not (and the I,Cringley article linked to above – including several intelligent statements found in the comments – brings ISPs’ claims into serious doubt), I believe bandwidth caps are coming. Moves to limit “unlimited” bandwidth plans by ATT, Verizon and Virgin Mobile will be followed by the others. Providers vying for the low-end market such as TMo and Sprint will keep some semblance of “unlimited” (although you can already see TMo’s attempts to encroach on “unlimited” bandwidth plans).

Regulations should specify that bandwidth caps “grow” with usage patterns. A survey of the market should identify the average bandwidth use and add a percentage to determine what the throttling threshold should be and set that as the limit. (Use some tricky statistics here – don’t look at me, though… I’m not a math major!):)

And “caps” shouldn’t be hard limits – once subscribers reach a bandwidth threshold, their bandwidth speed should be reduced, not cut off.

In the meantime, tools are beginning to surface that promise to keep ISPs honest about your bandwidth usage (apologies for the click-through ad!) and report whether you are being throttled.

What do you think?

Article By
Eric Larson
All San Diego Computer Repair
Eric Larson is the owner of All San Diego Computer Repair located in San Diego California. All San Diego Computer Repair provides basic services such as virus removal, computer repair, smartphone support and small business support to include server maintenance, backup systems and more.